{"slug": "vanishing-archaeological-landscapes-in-mesopotamia-corona-imagery-site-detection", "title": "Vanishing archaeological landscapes in Mesopotamia:CORONA imagery site detection", "summary": "Researchers upgraded a deep learning model using 1960s CORONA satellite imagery to automatically detect archaeological sites in Mesopotamia, achieving over 85% Intersection over Union and 90% detection accuracy in the Abu Ghraib district of Iraq. The retrained model identified four previously unknown archaeological sites, confirmed through field verification, demonstrating the efficacy of AI for discovering vanishing landscapes due to anthropization.", "body_md": "# Computer Science > Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition\n\n[Submitted on 17 Jul 2025 (\n\n[v1](https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.13420v1)), last revised 29 Jul 2025 (this version, v2)]# Title:AI-ming backwards: Vanishing archaeological landscapes in Mesopotamia and automatic detection of sites on CORONA imagery\n\n[View PDF](/pdf/2507.13420)\n\nAbstract:By upgrading an existing deep learning model with the knowledge provided by one of the oldest sets of grayscale satellite imagery, known as CORONA, we improved the AI model attitude towards the automatic identification of archaeological sites in an environment which has been completely transformed in the last five decades, including the complete destruction of many of those same sites. The initial Bing based convolutional network model was retrained using CORONA satellite imagery for the district of Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad, central Mesopotamian floodplain. The results were twofold and surprising. First, the detection precision obtained on the area of interest increased sensibly: in particular, the Intersection over Union (IoU) values, at the image segmentation level, surpassed 85 percent, while the general accuracy in detecting archeological sites reached 90 percent. Second, our retrained model allowed the identification of four new sites of archaeological interest (confirmed through field verification), previously not identified by archaeologists with traditional techniques. This has confirmed the efficacy of using AI techniques and the CORONA imagery from the 1960 to discover archaeological sites currently no longer visible, a concrete breakthrough with significant consequences for the study of landscapes with vanishing archaeological evidence induced by anthropization\n\n## Submission history\n\nFrom: Marco Roccetti [[view email](/show-email/d62c3ce5/2507.13420)]\n\n**Thu, 17 Jul 2025 14:21:50 UTC (10,085 KB)**\n\n[[v1]](/abs/2507.13420v1)**[v2]** Tue, 29 Jul 2025 07:01:34 UTC (9,945 KB)\n\n### Current browse context:\n\ncs.CV\n\n### References & Citations\n\nLoading...\n\n# Bibliographic and Citation Tools\n\nBibliographic Explorer\n\n*(*[What is the Explorer?](https://info.arxiv.org/labs/showcase.html#arxiv-bibliographic-explorer))\nConnected Papers\n\n*(*[What is Connected Papers?](https://www.connectedpapers.com/about))\nLitmaps\n\n*(*[What is Litmaps?](https://www.litmaps.co/))\nscite Smart Citations\n\n*(*[What are Smart Citations?](https://www.scite.ai/))# Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article\n\nalphaXiv\n\n*(*[What is alphaXiv?](https://alphaxiv.org/))\nCatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers\n\n*(*[What is CatalyzeX?](https://www.catalyzex.com))\nDagsHub\n\n*(*[What is DagsHub?](https://dagshub.com/))\nGotit.pub\n\n*(*[What is GotitPub?](http://gotit.pub/faq))\nHugging Face\n\n*(*[What is Huggingface?](https://huggingface.co/huggingface))\nScienceCast\n\n*(*[What is ScienceCast?](https://sciencecast.org/welcome))# Demos\n\n# Recommenders and Search Tools\n\nInfluence Flower\n\n*(*[What are Influence Flowers?](https://influencemap.cmlab.dev/))\nCORE Recommender\n\n*(*[What is CORE?](https://core.ac.uk/services/recommender))# arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators\n\narXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.\n\nBoth individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.\n\nHave an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? [ Learn more about arXivLabs](https://info.arxiv.org/labs/index.html).", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/vanishing-archaeological-landscapes-in-mesopotamia-corona-imagery-site-detection", "canonical_source": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.13420", "published_at": "2026-07-24 02:08:49+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-24 02:22:17.341359+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["computer-vision", "machine-learning", "artificial-intelligence"], "entities": ["CORONA", "Abu Ghraib", "Mesopotamia", "Marco Roccetti"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/vanishing-archaeological-landscapes-in-mesopotamia-corona-imagery-site-detection", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/vanishing-archaeological-landscapes-in-mesopotamia-corona-imagery-site-detection.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/vanishing-archaeological-landscapes-in-mesopotamia-corona-imagery-site-detection.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/vanishing-archaeological-landscapes-in-mesopotamia-corona-imagery-site-detection.jsonld"}}