Digital Geoarchaeology: An Approach to Reconstructing Ancient Landscapes at the Human-Environmental Interface

This paper aims to highlight the concept of digital archaeology, an approach to reconstructing ancient landscapes with special regard to human-environmental interactions. A broad variety of proper geoscientific, geo-informatic and archaeological methodologies is discussed, while special attention is paid to acquisition, quantity and quality of data as well as potentials and drawbacks of each application. Case studies from Central Crete demonstrate the particular suitability of remote sensing techniques, GIS-based analyses and landscape visualisations for this purpose. As shown by the results, digital geoarchaeological research provides access to new and hitherto unexplored datasets, which can be of great value for investigating archaeological questions. They shall not substitute profound archaeological expertise but support it in order to achieve a more comprehensive idea of palaeoenvironments. Digital geoarchaeology offers promising prospects for future studies combining geoscientific and humanistic know-how and constitutes a prosperous research field besides well-established physical geoarchaeology.