remote sensing Article Potentialities and Limitations of Research on VHRS Data: Alexander the Great’s Military Camp at Gaugamela on the Navkur Plain in Kurdish Iraq as a Test Case Tomasz Pirowski 1 , Michał Marciak 2,* and Marcin Sobiech 3 1 Department of Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing of Environment and Spatial Engineering, AGH University of Science and Technology, Al. Mickiewicza 30, 30-059 Kraków, Poland;
[email protected] 2 Institute of Jewish Studies, Faculty of History, Jagiellonian University in Kraków, 31-007 Kraków, Poland 3 EXGEO Professional Map, 87-100 Toru´n,Poland;
[email protected] * Correspondence:
[email protected] Abstract: This paper presents a selected aspect of research conducted within the Gaugamela Project, which seeks to finally identify the location of one of the most important ancient battles: the Battle of Gaugamela (331 BCE). The aim of this study was to discover material remains of the Macedonian military camp on the Navkur Plain in Kurdish Iraq. For this purpose, three very high resolution satellite (VHRS) datasets from Pleiades and WorldView-2 were acquired and subjected to multi- variant image processing (development of different color composites, integration of multispectral and panchromatic images, use of principle component analysis transformation, use of vegetation indices). Documentation of photointerpretation was carried out through the vectorization of features/areas. Due to the character of the sought-after artifacts (remnants of a large enclosure), features were categorized into two types: linear features and areal features. As a result, 19 linear features and Citation: Pirowski, T.; Marciak, M.; 2 areal features were found in the study area of the Mahad hills.