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Aerial Photographs 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. The Tees Archaeology Aerial Photography Collection was established in the early 1970s and now stands at over 4000 images. It covers the Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Redcar & Cleveland, Stockton-on-Tees local authorities and also parts of County Durham and North Yorkshire. Many archaeological sites that are now ploughed flat are still visible from the air as cropmarks which can show buried walls, floors or ditches lying beneath the growing crop. Where crops overlie buried walls their roots cannot extract as much moisture from the soil. The crop then becomes stunted and ripens earlier. The opposite occurs when crops grow over a buried ditch as their 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. |
Hartlepool Headland and St. Hilda's church. Aerial Photographs -Please Note these galleries are currently being updated- |
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