Ukraine Working Group
This group came about after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We made contact with Alex Karjaka, who had previously used Google Earth and published papers about roads, tracks and field systems based on that source, and was happy to be recruited to the WG. Through his work at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv, he has been able to provide the maps and site information that we wouldn’t have known about without his collaboration.
The WG has met at monthly intervals to discuss progress and problems by sharing images and knowledge. We are examining a comparatively small area of 110×120 km that was slightly expanded from a Sentinel-2 tile. Main interpretation work has been done in pairs who individually identify features in a 10×10 km square and then meet to amalgamate those in an agreed version which Martin Fowler then adds to the distribution map and database compiled in QGIS. Martin has also obtained HEXAGON strips that cover our area (thanks to AARG for a grant to cover that expense). We chose photographs taken on 18 May 1982 which were later than we hoped but were cloud free.
Since May 2022, more than 50% of the 66 10×10 km squares have been completed so the end may be in sight by AARG 2024. The group has identified some 50 feature types that date from Trypillia (chalcolithic) to Soviet era, and now is beginning to identify repeating patterns in the layout of some of the archaeological types. An interim note on progress for the Ukrainian journal Arheologia was also written, that will help show Ukrainian archaeologists what we have been up to and may inspire some to use the survey data or to think of the potential of aerial information for their own projects.
We have been in collaboration with Iris Kramer (ArchAI) who generously gave time and expertise to use machine learning to identify mounds on HEXAGON images. The WG was able to provide data that was used to train, validate, and test their method and it now remains for the WG to provide feedback and for us and ArchAI to see if further tweaking may improve AI’s recognition of these mounds.
Interactive Web App
Click here to view the interactive web app showing the results to the project to date.

Publications
Fowler, M. J. F. 2022. Through the Keyhole: Exploiting HEXAGON spy satellite photographs in AARG’s Ukraine Project. AARGnews 65, pp. 36-45.
Fowler, M. J. F. 2022. Taming the unknown: Combining different data sources in AARG’s Ukraine Project. AARGnews 65, pp. 29-35.
Kariaka, O. 2022. Remains of ancient tracks in the Lower Dnipro region according to satellite imagery. AARGnews 65, 20-28.
Kariaka, O. 2023. Kostiantyn Shyshkin in Soviet archaeology. AARGnews 66, pp. 10-18.
Palmer, R., 2022. AARG’s Ukraine Working Group. AARGnews 65, 13-19.
Palmer, R., Fowler, M., Kariaka, O. and Ward, V. 2023. An archaeological landscape survey of 6,600 sq km of Cherkasy Region, Ukraine, using open-source satellite images: first report. Arheologia 3, 5-20. DOI: https://doi.org/10.15407/arheologia2023.03.005
Ward, V. 2023a. Trypillia Sites: a comparison of Google Earth satellite images to aerial photograph analysis by K.V. Shyshkin. AARGnews 66, pp. 19-26.
Ward, V. 2023b. Trypillia database for AARG GE project. Document circulated to working group on 30 January 2023.
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