Rachel Opitz has an active research program focused on rural western Mediterranean societies and landscapes in the 1st millennium BCE. Her research investigates how different rural communities are operating within the increasingly interconnected Mediterranean world. The foundations of this work are in remote sensing and survey, and human perception of the built and natural environment as studied through formal exercises in 3D modeling.

Her recognized methodological expertise includes photogrammetric modeling, in LIDAR analysis of sites and landscapes, and in developing information metrics to ask new archaeological questions using 3D data.

She currently serves as the vice chair of the Aerial Archaeology Research Group, a member of the ArchaeoLandscapes International Project General Management Board, and as the Director of the SPARC Program.

Areas of interest:

• Archaeological Remote Sensing

• Landscape Archaeology

• Mediterranean Archaeology

• Digital methods and publication

• 3D modeling, analysis and interfaces