Antoine Poidebard (Lyon, 12 October 1878 – Beirut, 17 August 1955) was a French landscape archaeologist, Jesuit missionary, and pilot.
[1][2][3] Poidebard exploited shadows and differences in vegetation to discover mounts indicating past settlements and Roman roads, photographing these from the air and visiting some of the sites on the ground.
He was a pilot in the 39th Aviation Regiment of the French Levant in Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon during which time he conducted an aerial survey of desert regions.
[5] In the 1934 book, Roidebard documented hundreds of previously undiscovered Roman forts and structures on the empire's Eastern periphery.
[1] However, recent mapping work, which has revealed hundreds of additional forts, overall aligned east-west rather than north-south, has undermined his interpretation, indicating instead that the forts and structures "supported a system of caravan-based interregional trade, communication and military transport.