Use of Ikonos high resolution imagery in archaeology: the example of the ancient city of Bakchias in Egypt

The modern geomatic techniques open today new opportunities for archaeological surveying, giving the possibility to obtain highly accurate products at all the scales, from the single remain to wide areas of interest. This development is supported by a growing sensitiveness towards scientific and accurate surveying by the archaeologists. In this framework, remote sensing techniques represent a new powerful instrument, in particular thanks to the recent availability of high resolution imagery, with pixel size on the order of one meter. The main problem in adopting such data is certainly related to their georeferencing, in order to permit accurate analysis and a correct and exact integration with other datasets. The work presents the first results of an investigation about the use of Ikonos imagery on the ar-chaeological site of Bakchias, in Fayyum (Egypt), already subject of application of a large num-ber of different geomatic techniques in the last few years.