Addressing the challenge of detecting archaeological adobe structures in Southern Peru using QuickBird imagery

For thousands of years, people throughout the world have built homes, communities and temples using earth materials, mainly in arid and semi-arid lands where generally other building materials were quite scarce. In the arid regions of Peru, from the 3rd millennium B.C. to Inca age, several civilizations shaped sand, clay and water into bricks (known as adobe) to build ceremonial centres, pyramids and towns. The detection of adobe archaeological buried remains by means of remote sensing techniques is a challenge as difficult as engaging, since the adobe has a composition quite similar to the neighbouring earth material. In this paper, Very High Resolution (VHR) satellite imagery have been used to identify archaeological features linked to the presence of shallow and outcropping adobe structures in some test sites selected from within the Ceremonial Centre of Cahuachi (Southern Peru). Both vegetated and non-vegetated areas were investigated. The promising results we obtained pointed out that the use of Earth Observation (EO) technologies can open new perspectives to detect adobe settlements.