Remote Sensing for Science, Education, and Natural and Cultural Heritage

Rainer Reuter (Editor) EARSeL, 2010

Documentation of the Abandoned Town La Ciudad Perdida in Peru Combining VHR Satellite Data and Terrestrial Measurement
Karel PAVELKAa,1 , Michal BUKOVINSKYa, Jirina SVATUSKOVA a a Czech Technical University in Prague, Laboratory of Photogrammetry, Faculty of Civil Engineering, E-mail: pavelka@fsv.cvut.cz
Abstract. The Abandoned town near Huayuri (La Ciudad Perdida de Huayuri in Spain) is situated in Peru near Nasca plateau in the Ica region of Santa Cruz district in Palpa province. The Abandoned town is a pre-Columbian town in Peru in the late medieval period. Its period is dated sometimes between years 1000 and 1450 but it is very hard to say its exact beginning and the end. It is assumed that it starts at the Huari culture decline and finish with the Inca culture coming. The town remains spread in the valley at about 15 hectares area. There are remains of building walls in the bottom of the valley and the slopes around. Buildings are close to each other with a very small space between them that is typical for this architecture. Working with the photographs and the satellite images of the area creates the map of the abandoned town. The photos were taken during the sixth expedition Nasca/Peru 2008. The Photomodeler software made the model of a part of the abandoned town uncovered by a previous archaeological research. Satellite data were made on demand (new data acquired especially for this project) by the GeoEye-1 satellite. A new own prepared DEM from Terra/Aster stereo satellite images was used for satellite data processing with resolution of about 15m.Creating of the thematic map and visualization was the aim of this project. Keywords. VHR data, cultural heritage, satellite image, archaeology, La Ciudad Perdida, photogrammetry

Introduction The Abandoned town near Huayuri (La Ciudad Perdida de Huayuri in Spain) is situated in Peru near Nasca plateau in the Ica region of Santa Cruz district in Palpa province. The valley is oriented northeast aslant from the Santa Cruz River, at Huayuri village. It is possible to get there from Palpa to the West by the transatlantic highway or from Ica to the East (approximately an hour by a car). The Abandoned town is a pre-Columbian town in Peru in the late medieval period. Its period is dated sometimes between years 1000 and 1450 but it is very hard to say its exact beginning and the end. It is assumed that it starts at the Huari culture decline and finish with the Inca culture coming. But the elements of this period had been appearing at some regions only for a short time, though at other regions for a much longer time. There are some indicators that this district had been inhabited also during the Incas reign. The town remains spread in the valley at about 15 hectares area. There are remains of building walls in the bottom of the valley and the slopes around. Buildings are close to each other with a very small space between them that is typical for this architecture. The building structure is only for living in them; there were found no building and objects remains which should have other purposes - such as religious or economical for example.

Karel PAVELKA, et al.: Documentation of the Abandoned Town La Ciudad Perdida in Peru

Figure 1. Peru - region Ica, provincia Palpa (source: Web).

1. Research area For about 40 years of her life, Maria Reiche (1903-1998) from Dresden investigated structures called geoglyphos near Nasca and Palpa cities in Peru. In 1994 the Maria Reiche Association was founded in Dresden for extension and continual science workflow in the Nasca region. Within the framework of this association, several expeditions to Peru were realized. Nasca geoglyphos area is on the list of UNECSO world heritage; however, other areas are saved only on national or local level and their condition. There are a lot of unknown areas with valuable historical objects. One of these objects is abandoned town near Palpa. At present there is a very few information about the Abandoned town its inhabitants and their customs. The most information come from natives and partly from the previous research made in the years 1975 and 1984. There had been also the project PAHUAY - proyecto archeologico de Huayuri since 2002 to 2005. The project was done in cooperation with University of Pittsburgh and Peruvian universities and colleges and graduate student Viviana Siveroni as a project leader. The main goal of the project was to understand a process and conditions for nucleation of population - they used to live mainly in small settlements before. There is almost no information on the results of the project. 2. Measurement and utilized data Working with the photographs and the satellite images of the area creates the map of the abandoned town. The photos were taken during the sixth expedition Nasca/Peru 2008. The expedition was organized with cooperation between HTW Dresden and CTU in Prague. The GPS measurement in the area of the Nasca plateau for the following satellite images corrections was the main purpose of the expedition. During the expedition were also taken photographs in the area of the abandoned town near Huayuri and other photographs and measurements of next historical objects and sites in Palpa and Nasca region. The photographs were made by a professional digital camera Canon EOS 20D. The photos were used by means the intersection photogrammetry. The Photomodeler software made the model of a part of the abandoned town uncovered by a previous archaeological research. This 102

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model was placed into the area with the help of the GPS points measured during the expedition. An important part of the area was evaluated from adjusted and processed satellite data transformed by using of measured GPS points. The final model of the abandoned town near Huayuri is placed into Peruvian coordinate system PSAD56.

Figure 2. The Abandoned town near Palpa, excavated small part (photo:Pavelka).

3. Satellite data Satellite data were made on demand (new data acquired especially for this project) by the GeoEye-1 satellite with spatial resolution 0,5 m in panchromatic and 1,64m resolution in multispectral imagery. But this excellent very high resolution is still not enough for detailed survey in some cases; for this reasons the filtering, sharpening and resampling was used.

Figure 3. Processing of photogrammetric data in Photomodeler software.

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Figure 4. GeoEye-1 satellite data.

4. Use of DEM A new own prepared DEM from Terra/Aster stereo satellite images was used for satellite data processing with resolution of about 15 m. Two scenes of Aster data were used from Pacific Ocean to Cordilleras (about 60 x 120 km2, resolution 15 m). Necessary control points were localized on maps, photos or image sketches made from satellite images; these points were measured by Trimble GeoExplorer XP GPS instrument (approximately 20 per satellite stereo-pair). The base station and rover configuration was used with post processing accuracy of about 50-100 cm in position. The quality of this DEM is not sufficient for detailed mapping in big scales, but under reservations sufficient for creating of hypsography a orthogonalising of VHR data (there are no better DEM for using). We finished one own DEM from Nasca area based on ASTER satellite data beginning 2009; however, in June 2009 NASA and Japan released a new digital topographic map of Earth. The map was produced with detailed measurements from NASA's Terra spacecraft. The ASTER GDEM is in Geographic Tagged Image File Format (GeoTIFF) with geographic lat/long coordinates and a 1 arc-second (30 m) grid.

Figure 5. GeoEye-1 satellite data before and after preprocessing using filtering.

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Figure 6. Creating of thematic map using satellite images, DEM and vectors.

Figure 7. Perspective view on area of interest.

5. Conclusion This project uses satellite and terrestrial images with different geometrical and spectral resolution for basic mapping and documenting of historically valuable parts of landscape with archaeological artefacts. Creating of the thematic map and visualisation was the aim of this project. The results of the work: 105

Karel PAVELKA, et al.: Documentation of the Abandoned Town La Ciudad Perdida in Peru

map of the abandoned town near Huayuri in Peru the 3d area view in vrml format video demonstration of flying over the 3D model the kml file for GoogleEarth

Acknowledgement This project is supported by the grant of the Ministry of Education and CTU research scheme Nr. 34-07401. References
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Web sites: HTW Dresden: http://www.htw-dresden.de/nazca/, CTU in Prague: http://lfgm.fsv.cvut.cz. Pavelka,K.: Rectification of Petroglyphs with photogrammetrical methods, p.103-114, Dresdener Kartographische Schriften, Hrsg.B.Teichert and CH.Rust,, Nasca Symposium, HTW Dresden, Dresden 2007, ISSN 14360004,pp.103-114 Pavelka,K.: The Documentation of Historical Monuments in Peru (Geoglyphs nad Petroglyphs in Nazca Region and Sechin Archeological Site), Workshop VUT, 2008, ISBN 978-80-01-4016-4, pp.352-353 Pavelka,K.:Using of Remote Sensing and Photogrammetry for Documentation of Geoglyphs in Nazca/Peru Region , 29th Asian Conference of Remote Sensing, Sri-Lanka, 10.-14.11.2008 Pavelka, K, Tollingerov,D.: Soil & Water Res., 3, 2008 (2): pp.5261, Creating of Digital Surface Model and Orthophoto from ASTER Satellite Data and their Application in Land/Water Research, ISSN 1801-5395 Pavelka, K., Svatukov,J., Bukovinsk,M.: Using of VHR satellite data for potential digs localisation and their verification using geophysical methods, 1st EARSeL International Workshop on Advances in Remote Sensing for Archaeology and Cultural Heritage Management, Rome, 30.9. 4.10.2008 Lambers, Karsten: The Geoglyphs of Palpa, Peru: Documentation, Analysis, and Interpretation (Forschungen zur Archologie Aussereuropischer Kulturen, vol. 2). Aichwald: Linden Soft. ISBN 3929290324, 2006 Lambers, K., Sauerbier,M.: A fresh view on the Nasca lines: Investigating geoglyph visibility in Palpa (Ica, Peru). In: Clark, Jeffrey T., Emily M. Hagemeister (eds.): Digital Discovery: Exploring New Frontiers in Human Heritage. CAA 2006. Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology. Proceedings of the 34th Conference, Fargo, United States, April 2006, 215-225. Budapest: Archaeolingua. Sauerbier, M., Schrotter,G. Eisenbeiss,H. Lambers,K.: Multi-resolution image-based visualization of archaeological landscapes in Palpa (Peru).. In: Campana, Stefano, Maurizio Forte (eds.), From Space to Place: Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Remote Sensing in Archaeology, CNR, Rome, Italy, December 4-7, 2006 (BAR International Series 1568), 353-359. Oxford: Archaeopress.

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