Interpreting Agricultural Activities in Historical Aerial Photographs

Historical aerial photographs from the early twentieth century have great interpretive potential for understanding the agricultural landscapes they record. In addition to building a chronology of farm layout, historical images can record particular crops and other agricultural activities, adding nuance to interpretations of historical agricultural space. Identifying particular crops and other activities requires practice and skill. This article presents a set of basic interpretive tools for understanding what is recorded in historical aerial photographs of farmland. An extended example is presented from Lunenburg County, Virginia.