Archaeological site identification from open access multispectral imagery: Cloud computing applications in Northern Kurdistan (Iraq)

This paper presents the results of an archaeological survey carried out in the NavkurPlain, Iraqi Kurdistan, as part of the ‘Asingeran Archaeological Project’. The surveywas prepared using remote sensing products accessed via Google Earth Engineⓒ, alarge-scale cloud computing service freely available to the scientific community thatallows processing remote sensing big data. Outputs generated with a multitemporalapproach are particularly successful for archaeological research, because it is possibleto maximize the visibility of archaeological sites, improving their detection. Multispectralimagery from Landsat 5, Landsat 7 and Sentinel-2 collections were used andprocessed, testing their utility for finding unknown ancient settlements in the denselystudied area of Northern Mesopotamia. Seventeen new sites were discovered in analready surveyed area of limited size (<100 km2), showing the potentialities of thismethod. The advantages of cloud computing for Near Eastern Archaeology and theresults of the survey are also presented and discussed.