Monday 16th November 2009 - Sarah Newsome
'The eyes of the RAF: Archaeological survey using historic aerial photographs'
In this paper, Sarah Newsome will give a brief introduction to the development of aerial photography as a tool for archaeologists and demonstrate how this is intimately linked to the development of aerial photograph for military reconnaissance. The talk will go on to summarise how aerial photographs are used for archaeological survey and research, particularly by English Heritage. Finally a number of case studies, mainly from the Suffolk coast, will be used to highlight the particular importance of the historic aerial photographs taken by the RAF. The case studies will demonstrate how these photographs provide a unique record of Britain’s landscapes of the late 1940s, capturing the impact of the Second World War and now-destroyed archaeological sites from other periods.
Sarah Newsome works in a team of landscape archaeologists that covers the East Midlands and East of England, and is based at the English Heritage regional office in Cambridge. Sarah has been investigating and surveying archaeological sites and landscapes for English Heritage for a number of years, using aerial photographs for archaeological research before moving to Cambridge in 2006 to undertake ground-based surveys. Sarah has published a number of articles and a book based on her work using aerial photographs to survey the Suffolk coast and has more recently worked on ground-based surveys of a tudor garden at Ashby-de-la-Zouch castle, a 19th-century military training establishment at Woolwich and manorial fishponds in Bedfordshire to name but a few.
'The eyes of the RAF: Archaeological survey using historic aerial photographs'
In this paper, Sarah Newsome will give a brief introduction to the development of aerial photography as a tool for archaeologists and demonstrate how this is intimately linked to the development of aerial photograph for military reconnaissance. The talk will go on to summarise how aerial photographs are used for archaeological survey and research, particularly by English Heritage. Finally a number of case studies, mainly from the Suffolk coast, will be used to highlight the particular importance of the historic aerial photographs taken by the RAF. The case studies will demonstrate how these photographs provide a unique record of Britain’s landscapes of the late 1940s, capturing the impact of the Second World War and now-destroyed archaeological sites from other periods.
Sarah Newsome works in a team of landscape archaeologists that covers the East Midlands and East of England, and is based at the English Heritage regional office in Cambridge. Sarah has been investigating and surveying archaeological sites and landscapes for English Heritage for a number of years, using aerial photographs for archaeological research before moving to Cambridge in 2006 to undertake ground-based surveys. Sarah has published a number of articles and a book based on her work using aerial photographs to survey the Suffolk coast and has more recently worked on ground-based surveys of a tudor garden at Ashby-de-la-Zouch castle, a 19th-century military training establishment at Woolwich and manorial fishponds in Bedfordshire to name but a few.