This paper presents the results of an archaeological survey carried out in the Navkur
Plain, Iraqi Kurdistan, as part of the ‘Asingeran Archaeological Project’. The survey
was prepared using remote sensing products accessed via Google Earth Enginec, a
large-scale cloud computing service freely available to the scientific community that
allows processing remote sensing big data. Outputs generated with a multitemporal
approach are particularly successful for archaeological research, because it is possible
to maximize the visibility of archaeological sites, improving their detection. Multispectral
imagery from Landsat 5, Landsat 7 and Sentinel-2 collections were used and
processed, testing their utility for finding unknown ancient settlements in the densely
studied area of Northern Mesopotamia. Seventeen new sites were discovered in an
already surveyed area of limited size (<100 km2), showing the potentialities of this
method. The advantages of cloud computing for Near Eastern Archaeology and the
results of the survey are also presented and discussed.
