Ancient sites spotted from space, by computers

[Kosmo]

Thousands of possible early human settlements have been discovered by archaeologists using computers to scour satellite images.

 

Jason Ur said he had found about 9,000 potential new sites in north-eastern Syria.

 

Computers scanned the images for soil discolouration and mounds caused when mud-brick settlements collapsed.

 

Dr Ur said surveying the same area on the ground would have taken him a lifetime.

 

he researcher told BBC News: "With these computer science techniques, however, we can immediately come up with an enormous map which is methodologically very interesting, but which also shows the staggering amount of human occupation over the last 7,000 or 8,000 years.

 

"What's more, anyone who comes back to this area for any future survey would already know where to go.

 

"There's no need to do this sort of initial reconnaissance to find sites. This allows you to do targeted work, so it maximises the time we have on the ground."

 

Iraqi heritage sites In the past, Dr Ur used declassified spy satellite photographs and the human eye to try to identify potential sites.

 

But over the last three years, he has worked with computer expert Bjoern Menze, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to create a software application able to classify a huge range of terrain.

 

He said this had removed subjectivity and allowed them to look at a much larger area.

 

In all, about 9,000 possible settlements were identified across 23,000 sq km.

 

Ideally, he said, some of these would be excavated, but the volatile political situation in Syria had forced them to put any ground searches on hold.

 

However, he did tell the BBC that he hoped to conduct further research in the Kurdish provinces of northern Iraq, and follow that up with excavations that would be "a very rigorous testing of the model".

 

Archaeological work in Iraq has not been popular in the past, but Dr Ur feels the time is right to identify heritage sites of importance and ensure they are not lost as the country presses on with widespread development of its towns and cities.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17436400

 

 

Mapping patterns of long-term settlement in Northern Mesopotamia at a large scale

 

Abstract

The landscapes of the Near East show both the first settlements and the longest trajectories of settlement systems. Mounding is a characteristic property of these settlement sites, resulting from millennia of continuing settlement activity at distinguished places. So far, however, this defining feature of ancient settlements has not received much attention, or even been the subject of systematic evaluation. We propose a remote sensing approach for comprehensively mapping the pattern of human settlement at large scale and establish the largest archaeological record for a landscape in Mesopotamia, mapping about 14,000 settlement sites

[guy]

Here's another example of how modern technology (in this case, Google) was used to find an Ancient Roman village near Parma (and about eight miles from my cousin's farm):

 

http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050912/full/news050912-6.html

 

Using satellite images from Google Maps and Google Earth, an Italian computer programmer has stumbled upon the remains of an ancient villa. Luca Mori was studying maps of the region around his town of Sorbolo, near Parma, when he noticed a prominent, oval, shaded form more than 500 metres long. It was the meander of an ancient river, visible because former watercourses absorb different amounts of moisture from the air than their surroundings do.

 

Analysis of a Google map led to the discovery of a Roman villa like this one in Parma, Italy

 

 

guy also known as gaius

Edited March 22, 2012 by guy