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In this editorial article for the Special Issue on Unlocking Sacred Landscapes: Digital Humanities and Ritual Space, we introduce the applicability of digital humanities to the study of ritual space. The Issue focuses on digital approaches both to ritual space and to artefacts relating to ritual practice and cult. The terms ritual and cult are used broadly to include sanctuaries, temples and churches, as well as the domestic and funerary spheres of life. We include contributions with a strong methodological focus on computational developments, digitisation processes and spatial analyses. Although the main focus of the Unlocking Sacred Landscapes (UnSaLa) Research Network is the Mediterranean region, we have also encouraged colleagues working in other areas of the world to contribute to this volume, with a view to stimulating wider methodological dialogues and comparative approaches. The chronological span ranges from prehistory to the recent past, and includes cultural heritage management.

Following recent excavations and geophysical prospection at Idomeni in the Kilkis prefecture of Northern Greece, this paper attempts to reconstruct through digital means, the tangible and intangible vestiges of historical episodes that come together to form multiple narratives of a diachronically terra incognita site, gradually unlocking its hidden secrets. The digital documentation and processing, with the use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS), of the spatial remains associated with historical episodes demonstrate the ways in which space at Idomeni was used within a multifaceted, diachronic framework. It is a place that is constantly being transformed over the past 7000 years from a seemingly “peaceful” agricultural community during the Neolithic period to a burial ground for a still invisible Middle Byzantine settlement, and finally, as a place of violence having been one of the battlefields of the First World War. The story of Idomeni has only recently been concluded as the theatre of a dramatic influx of modern refugees. Thus, the “multilayered” identity of a mnemonic place with various representations of the past unfolds: on one hand the distant eras, such as the still unknown Neolithic and Middle Byzantine period, and on the other, the relatively recent “traumatic” (war-related) past. Within the specific historical context of the First World War, this paper discusses the management of memories of locals and non-locals, e.g. the disappearance of entire settlements, or the emergence of new toponyms related to the protagonists and their actions during the war in the area of Idomeni remaining in the memory of locals today.

In recent years, an on-going project investigating the urban landscape of Naxos has surveyed and produced several new digital reconstructions of the settlement’s simple non-peripteral temples, most with highly decorative roofs. Three Archaic sacred buildings of Sicilian Naxos are used to demonstrate different approaches to recording the remains and reconstructing their architectural features. This work reflects changes in digital strategies over the past ten years. Tempietto H is a small shrine located outside the city’s boundaries and the site is currently inaccessible, so its reconstruction is based on excavation documentation and roof terracottas. The visible half of Tempietto C was documented using three-dimensional line-drawing with total stations and photogrammetry; the back-filled south-western part was surveyed with ground penetrating radar. Temple B is the largest sacred structure in Naxos. A geophysical survey gives new data on the eastern extent of the sanctuary. The area has been recorded with handheld and aerial photography to create a three-dimensional model of the sanctuary. A new orthogonal grid of the city was established circa 470 BCE and a rectangular base was placed in the south-east corner of every crossroad. These bases were the starting point for the plan, and their interpretation as altars converts the entire urban plan into a sacred landscape.

The olive oil industry is considered to be as one of the driving sectors of the agricultural economy of the Mediterranean basin. The extraction of olive oil generates huge quantities of wastes that may have a great impact on land and water environments due to high concentrations in phenolic compounds that could cause ophytotoxicity. This paper aims to examine the potential use of freely distributed satellite images for the detection of olive oil mil waste (OOMW) areas in the island of Crete through the use of two cases studies. In the first case study an archive GeoEye OrbView-3 image was used to detect OOMW areas using the Spectral Angle Mapper detection algorithm and other geometric and topographic parameters. In the second case study, Google Earth images were examined through different classification algorithms at different scales. The overall results demonstrate that remote sensing techniques can be used as an alternative to field observations so as to detect and monitor OOMW areas Furthermore, freely distributed RGB images from digital globes (such as Google Earth) can be sufficiently and effectively used for this purpose.