Photogrammetric textured representations of archaeological sites, and above all orthorectification, combine geometric accuracy with visual detail (regarding damage or decay), thus providing a suitable basis for conservation. Yet, orthoprojection in archaeology still poses difficult problems. At the examples of two ancient Greek sites, certain issues are discussed and illustrated. First, in most cases sites need to be recorded from considerable heights above ground with special low-cost camera platforms (balloon, modified fishing-rod etc.). A usual consequence of ‘unstable’ camera elevators is poor control over image rotations, responsible for irregular strip geo-metry; bundle adjustment is further complicated by unknown interior orientation of lightweight non-metric cameras and strong dis-tortions of wide-angle lenses. A second crucial aspect dealt with here is the authors’ approach for precise surface modeling to ensure products of both geometric accuracy and high iconic quality; this entails surface description through a careful combination of break-lines and densely sampled spot elevations for handling edges and surface discontinuities. Regarding laser scanning, now being exten-sively tried in the context of archaeology, experiments carried out here confirmed that it could indeed replace tedious photogramme-tric 3D modeling in several cases. However, it is rather clear that laser scanning cannot in fact totally replace photogrammetric mo-deling. This is due not only to problems posed by shape, size, location and surroundings of many archaeological objects, but also to problems emerging mainly with respect to edges. It is concluded that simple means of image acquisition and careful photogrammetric handling can produce results of high geometric and visual quality, while tiresome photogrammetric modeling can partly (but some-times cannot) be replaced by laser scanning. Functional synergy of the two approaches is a delicate matter to be further investigated.