PHOTOGRAMMETRIC DOCUMENTATION AND DIGITAL REPRESENTATION OF THE MACEDONIAN PALACE IN VERGINA-AEGEAE

In this paper, the photogrammetric procedure and the development of a G.I.S. application for the digital documentation of the Macedonian Palace in the archaeological site of Vergina-Aegeae in northern Greece are described. Within this framework, the focus is targeted towards the use of UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) for the production of high resolution orthoimages, essential for the interpretation, detection and measurement of archeological features. The advantages of model helicopters are seen in their ability to operate close to the object, to be flexible in navigation and in viewing directions. For the acquisition of the aerial images in the area of the 4th B.C. Palace in Vergina-Aegeae, a flight planning prior to fieldwork and a careful acquisition of the images was required to ensure successful postprocessing. The images were downloaded and processed already in the field in order to ensure good image quality, sufficient overlap between them and avoid large scale differences as well. The photogrammetric image processing of the data, comprising of the tie point measurement, bundle adjustment, DSM and orthophoto generation was done with the commercial software package LPS (Leica Photogrammetry Suite, Leica Geosystems), which offers functionalities for a complete photogrammetric working process. The resulting accuracy was acceptable for the 1:100 mapping. In addition to the above, within the general framework of the project, the development of a G.I.S. application with the commercial software package ArcGIS is described.