Stone structures in the Syrian Desert

An arid land, known as the Syrian Desert, is covering a large part of the Middle East. In the past, this harsh environment, characterized by huge lava fields, the "harraat", was considered as a barrier between Levant and Mesopotamia. When we observe this desert from space, we discover that it is crossed by some stone structures, the "desert kites", which were the Neolithic traps for the game. Several stone circles are visible too, as many Stonehenge sites dispersed in the desert landscape. We can use an image processing tool, based on the fractional gradient, to analyse the satellite images to help location of the archaeological sites. Transferring the use of physical quantities, such as gradient, fractional gradient or wavelets, to the image processing can give good results in several multidisciplinary applications. Other tools are under development.