The LBI aims at bringing together all specialist fields contributing to settlement-, environmental- and landscape archaeology. This way, the LBI framework permits an intense and close collaboration between all disciplines necessary for a novel holistic approach towards archaeological landscapes. To achieve the latter, the institute is mainly dedicated to the improvement of theory and methodology exemplified by the development of new techniques for efficient, non-destructive data capturing, processing and visualisation. These aims will be pursued in three different programme lines, using a variety of case study areas. Besides, the results gained will be disseminated both in professional circles as well as to the general public.

Obviously, prospecting landscapes with abundant detail results in very large datasets. To handle those, it is of the utmost importance to rethink current technological and methodological approaches for data handling, interpretation and information extraction. This process already starts during data acquisition, reconsidering the present practices of archaeological prospection. Additionally, the quality of the documentation is of paramount importance. Storing data in specific formats with standardised metadata schemes should simplify their distribution and detailed analysis.

To go beyond conventional approaches, new visualisation techniques by means of virtual reality (VR) and GIS-based methods of integrated archaeological interpretation are also deemed essential. Besides this theoretical approach, the complete range of epistemological approaches towards the historical and cultural reconstruction of an archaeological landscape has to be applied as well. Particularly this concept is the main objective behind the proposed research programme, as only an integrative approach will be the basis of progress in the understanding of our archaeological heritage at a regional scale.