Aerial
Photography
Tees Archaeology's extensive aerial photography
collection.
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further information
Aerial photographs are useful tools to the archaeologist.
They give a bird’s eye view of entire landscapes
and settlements. They also show vanished sites
as marks in ripening crops or as darker stains
in ploughed fields invisible at ground level.
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Girrick Moor from
the air (TA0100770001)
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The Tees Archaeology Aerial Photography Collection
has been established from the early 1970s. The
collection now stands at over 4000 images and
covers the local authorities of Hartlepool, Middlesbrough,
Redcar & Cleveland, Stockton-on-Tees and
parts of County Durham and North Yorkshire.
The Aerial Photography
Gallery on this website
currently holds 824 images from the collection.
The Tees Archaeology collection consists of
oblique (meaning at an angle) photographs taken
by archaeologists with hand-held cameras at low
altitudes. Rather than having blanket coverage
of the area the collection focuses on individual
archaeological sites, many of which were discovered
for the first time from the air.
Many archaeological sites that are now ploughed
flat are still visible from the air as cropmarks
which can appear when there are buried walls,
floors or ditches beneath the growing harvest.
Where there are buried walls the crops roots
cannot extract as much moisture from the soil.
The crop becomes stunted and ripens earlier.
Where buried ditches occur the roots penetrate
deeper giving greener, taller growth that ripens
later.
Sites which physically survive on the ground
also benefit from aerial photography. Earthwork
sites, which are hard to read at ground level,
are easier to understand given an aerial vantage.
This is particularly the case when a low sun
casts shadows across sites, picking out even
the faintest remains. Sometimes a covering of
snow can add even greater definition.
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Hartlepool Headland
with St. Hilda's church. April 1982 (TA0104230001)
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