Romantic versus scientific perspective: The ruins of Radlin palace in Wielkopolska region in the light of remote sensing techniques

Authors:

• Aleksandra Wilgocka,
• Dominik Ruciński,
• Włodzimierz Rączkowski

Abstract

Although ruins of palace in Radlin, localized in Wielkopolska Region (Poland), could have been a great inspiration for romantic landscape painters, they were hardly considered as the subject of artistic interest. Nevertheless they stand as a marker in a landscape as a romantic background for the village on one hand and a memento for the neighbouring graveyard on another. Small scale excavations carried out in late 1950s with historical maps and analysis of still standing remains gave a general idea about wings order, localisation of main entrance and communication routs inside courtyard. Those early research thereby were the first step to change the meaning of this place from romantic to more scientific. New remote sensing technology allows move even further into scientific direction. The ruins in Radlin have been included into project ArchEO - archaeological applications of Earth Observation techniques. The main aim of the project in case of Radlin is an attempt to answer the question to what extent very high resolution optical satellite imagery might allow better understanding the spatial structure of the place. The various processing techniques were applied to facilitate the detection of archaeological features' impact on the vegetation condition. It enabled to assess the usefulness of satellite based data in recognizing specific archaeological remains. Thus, potential and limitations of satellite imagery versus other sources of spatial information like historic maps, excavation results, aerial photographs and Lidar will be discussed.