UAVs have found an important application in archaeological mapping. Majority
of the existing methods employ an offline method to process the data collected
from an archaeological site. They are time-consuming and computationally
expensive. In this paper, we present a multi-UAV approach for faster mapping of
archaeological sites. Employing a team of UAVs not only reduces the mapping
time by distribution of coverage area, but also improves the map accuracy by
exchange of information. Through extensive experiments in a realistic
simulation (AirSim), we demonstrate the advantages of using a collaborative
mapping approach. We then create the first 3D map of the Sadra Fort, a 15th
Century Fort located in Gujarat, India using our proposed method. Additionally,
we present two novel archaeological datasets recorded in both simulation and
real-world to facilitate research on collaborative archaeological mapping. For
the benefit of the community, we make the AirSim simulation environment, as
well as the datasets publicly available