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Discovery of ancient water reservoir in historical town of Phimai , Nakornrathchasima, Thailand: Application of air SAR for archaeology study Methodology
Initially, the work had been started by the analysis of the combination of different polarization from P, L, and C bands to identify the most suitable combination of bands for the work. First the combination had been compared with the map of the area to compare the object that could be detected from the current infrastructures. After the combination had been identified, we continued to identify the infrastructures that were not modern infrastructures (Figure 2).  Figure 2 Analysis of AirSAR data from different polarization After combination of different polarization had been analyzed, the air photo (1954) had been used to compared with the image for further study with undisturbed environment as shown in the air photo and also with 1:50,000 map (Figure 3A, 3B).
In order to identify the ancient infrastructure, we need to compare identified object with the classified ancient infrastructure. In this case, we had compared the infrastructure in question with the most well known Khmer's infrastructure, infrastructure in Angkor area (FREEMAN and JACQUES, 1999).
After the comparison, we could identify the structure of water reservoir in Phimai. The water reservoir, in Khmer was called "baray", was located on the south of Phimai temple with the distance of 2 kilometer (Figure 4A, 4B). From the identification, the direction of the baray was in corespondent with the direction of the town itself. When we compared the pattern of the baray at Phimai and Angkor, they matched perfectly. The additional information that we got from the pattern in Angkor was that in the middle of the baray, there was a temple on the island. This pattern was appeared on both east baray and west baray in Angkor. As the result of the comparison between Angkor and Phimai, we had tried to further analyze the AirSAR data. From the DEM generated from C band, we found a high elevation area in the middle of the baray (Figure 5A). We expected that it is the temple in the same pattern as in Angkor. After the field survey and contacting an archaeologist in the area, we found the evident on the ground that supported the assumption. The most interesting finding about this temple was that the temple align itself directly to the main temple of Phimai in the same direction of the alignment of the Phimai temple and the baray (Figure 5B).
Finding Result As explained in the previous section, our analysis had found ancient infrastructures in Phimai area. The finding from this research are : baray, temple in the middle of baray, and ancient roads to Phimai temple (Figure 6). From these findings, there will be followed up by the reconstruction of the finding in virtual world.  Figure 6 PLC image overlaid with the ancient infrastructure Conclusion The baray was probably the largest one in Thailand. From the study, we would like to extend the study to identify historic roadway, communication links and human settlement of Khmer empire using remote sensing / GIS and then develop historical and archaeological multi-media GIS for the area of study, which is the area covered between Angkor Wat and Phimai. References
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