Topographical Analyses of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle-Based Very High-Resolution Digital Surface Models for Archaeological Sites

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can provide very useful image data sets for exploring structures at archaeological sites. The digital surface model (DSM) is a type of data set that can be derived from UAV images by using photogrammetric materials and methods. The aim of this research is firstly to obtain a very high-resolution DSM and secondly, to perform geographic information system (GIS)-based topographical analyses of the archaeological site at Sebastopolis. The ancient city of Sebastopolis is in the Sulusaray district of the Tokat province in Turkey's Black Sea region; the site belongs to the Hellenistic/Roman period. This study shows that the multirotor type of UAV is particularly useful for applications that require flying at very low altitude above archaeological sites and that DSMs that can be derived in this way are very effective for analysing the topographical structure of archaeological sites in detail.