L’Atlante Aerotopografico Storico delle città antiche dell’Albania

For the 2021-2022 International Joint Archaeological Laboratories Project of the National Research Council, through the collaboration between the Italian Institute for Cultural Heritage of the National Research Council, and the Albanian Institute of Archaeology - Academy of Albanological Studies, and the Faculty of Geology and Mining - Polytechnic of Tirana (also in context of the Bilateral Agreement CNRMoES), a historical aero-topographic atlas of the ancient cities and the main archaeological sites of Albania is being created. The aim is to collect and study a rich historical remote sensing documentation, from both aerial and satellite platforms, little known and scarcely used in archaeological research in Albania, to provide a useful investigation tool to the various international research groups operating in this territory. The atlas collects studies and interpretations of historical aerial photographs taken by Italian Geographic Institute and cosmic photographs acquired by American spy satellites between the end of the 1960s and the early 1970s, compared with the current situation of the places documented by recent high-resolution satellite images. The atlas will be a useful tool for understanding the transformations of the territorial contexts of the archaeological sites, the identification of new or lost data on the ancient topography of the settlements, the study of historical landscapes and paleo-environmental contexts.