Detection of archaeological crop marks on declassified CORONA KH-4B intelligence satellite photography of Southern England

Recently declassified intelligence satellite photographs acquired in the 1960s and early 1970s by the CORONA programme have been found to be an important source of low‐cost, relatively high resolution, overhead photography that can be used in the prospection for archaeological features. Hitherto, the material has been used primarily to detect archaeological features in the arid regions of Asia Minor and the Middle East either in relief or through changes in soil tone resulting from the presence of former human habitation. In this paper the authors describe, for the first time, the detection of archaeological crop marks on CORONA KH‐4B photography of southern England indicating that there could be a wider utility of the CORONA archive for archaeological prospection in temperate regions. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.