CONTRIBUTION OF THE GEOEYE-1 IMAGERY TO THE STUDY OF ANCIENT INDUSTRIAL SITES IN ARID REGION. EXAMPLE OF THE 17TH CENTURY SAN ANTONIO SILVER MINES (LIPEZ, SOUTH BOLIVIA)

FLORIAN TÉREYGEOL; JEAN PAUL DEROIN; PABLO CRUZ; IVAN GUILLOT; JEAN-CHARLES MEAUDRE

Ghent

Workshop; 3rd EARSeL Workshop on Remote Sensing for Archaeology 1 and Cultural Heritage Management; 2012

European Association of Remote Sensing Laboratories

Bolivia is a particularly rich country regarding archeometallurgy field research. The sites which mark out the country cover a wide chronology from the first ages of metals until our days. By the set of the environmental conditions, sites can frequently present a very good state of preservation. On the other hand, level of development of infrastructures make places difficult to access. The new tools for archaeological research can help to mitigate, at least partially, very pragmatic problems of cost of mission and access to the field by authorizing a relocation of a part of field work towards the laboratory. It still is necessary to evaluate the potential of these new techniques generally, and the remote detection in particular in the field of mining and metallurgical archaeology. First very positive results were reached on other fields (Deroin et al., 2012). It seems interesting to go ahead on this evaluation and to definite how archaeologist could use it in various contexts.