Un approccio agronomico al remote sensing da drone per lo studio delle evidenze archeologiche sepolte. Il metodo e i casi studio a dieci anni dalle prime acquisizioni

Multispectral remote sensing by drone, which originated for precision agriculture, is now recog- nized as an efficient tool for detecting archaeo- logical marks from vegetation. This paper proposes a methodology that has been developed and refined since 2011 and that is based, from a theoretical point of view, on an agronom- ic approach, which focuses on an in-depth under- standing of the relationships between buried ar- chaeological contexts and the covering vegetation, studying the characteristics of the plant species present in the archaeological context in connec- tion to environmental and climatic conditions. Drones equipped with a multispectral sensor can increase the visibility of cropmarks by analyzing the slightest variations in the physiological status of plants invisible to the human eye. To achieve this, the images acquired by the camera must first be processed following various steps and related using mathematical formulas called vegetation indices. This methodology has been tested at ar- chaeological sites of high scientific interest with different environmental characteristics. Therefore, the main results obtained are presented to e