Archaeology from Space

by Sarah Parcak

  Near the end of the 2017 season, as my workmen and I cleared around the column bases in the main hall, a dark hole appeared in the floor. We peered into an entrance four millennia old. Broken into in antiquity, and again in 2011, it was likely Intef’s original burial place, its stone blocking still plastered in around its edges. Not far away, three intact offering bowls surfaced. One on the tomb’s floor suggested a frozen moment. Just maybe, this bowl was placed by the last person to offer to one of Ipi’s descendants. We will return to dig deeper in the future.

  From Space to Place

  For the 2017 season, in addition to continuing excavation, we had the even more pressing and ambitious goal of mapping the southern half of the site, including the looting pits.

  Using a total station, a mapping and surveying tool that allows you to take points for exact x, y, and z coordinates, our survey engineer, Ahmed Ibrahim Ahmed, helped us to create a detailed 3-D map of south Lisht. Meanwhile, another team used differential GPS to record looting pits we had mapped on the satellite imagery. A keen young inspector from the Ministry of Antiquities, Mahmoud Allam, and Reda Esmat el-Arafy, a geologist from Egypt’s Nuclear Materials Authority and a former PhD student of mine with a curiosity for everything and an infectious laugh, made short and productive work of the recording. We had to see if the imagery had picked up random digging, actual tombs, or natural landscape features.

  In just a few weeks, they processed 802 tombs, all previously unknown to Egyptologists. These include a full range of tomb types and will help us to understand burial practices in the region. We’re working on a searchable tomb database that covers type, building material, size, location, stone quality, and approximate date of looting. Most of these shaft tombs contain between two and eight additional burials of family units, so together, the tombs probably held the burials of more than 4,000 individuals or families, all of whom lived and died in Itj-Tawy.

  We still have over 1,000 potential tombs to map in the northern part of Lisht, representing another 5,000 or more individuals, and those are just the ones that looters have exposed. It is sobering to consider the scale of what remains to be discovered at this one site, and what new light it may shed on the Middle Kingdom.

  On the last day of our season, I went to the hilltop overlooking the tomb. The exposed hall and the causeway mined by intrusive later burials were breathtaking. Over every shaft tomb and each chapel niche, we have built heavy-duty brick caps with locked iron doors. Up on top of the gebel sits a new guard hut, which our project pays to man, and which beams floodlights across the ancient cemetery. The satellite imagery already indicates that new looting has decreased since we established it.

  In the future, we hope to restore Intef’s tomb and piece together the shattered reliefs. Though we may never know what brought about their destruction, our work at his tomb and the associated security measures have protected the last remains of the community among whom his family lived and lay at rest for so long. One day, we may find out more about them; Intef’s tomb may be one of the many unsolved cases of the past, but given what we’ve found so far, I remain hopeful.

  A Hope Machine for Humanity

  In the last two chapters, we’ve taken quite a journey, from learning how Egypt’s great Pyramid Age ended, to seeing it rise again to cultural florescence in the Middle Kingdom. The term “collapse,” as used by so many of my colleagues for the end of the Old Kingdom, implies full destruction. I see these time periods more like balloons that deflate and reinflate depending on external forces. From the great disarray Egypt experienced in the First Intermediate Period, we see the Middle Kingdom launch—call it Ancient Egypt 2.0, not better, but different.

  Our society today may also need to deflate in order to reform itself and evolve. The lesson from ancient history is that we never stop pushing or testing new boundaries, whether we are individuals trying to learn from our past, or groups of people changing entire power structures. We never have. We never will. One great age ending does not guarantee a new age will emerge, but it might. That’s the foresight that the past can give us.

  The archaeological site of El-Lisht is restricted to a cemetery today. The city of Itj-Tawy still beckons, beneath the modern, living Lisht, which might contain the descendants of the people in the desert cemetery. We may not know Intef’s or Ipi’s stories yet, but we have brought them back from oblivion, fulfilling every ancient Egyptian’s deepest wish:43 to be remembered.

  Archaeology is a hope machine for humanity, as I see it. My wish is that you will, too, after reading about the rise and fall and rise again of these ancient Egyptian ages, and that you’ll see these stories are not only in Egypt. They are everywhere beneath our feet. They are worth digging for, and worth protecting.

  9

  The Future of the Past

  THE SCENE: AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL MOUND, SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE EAST. THE YEAR: 2119 …

  Robbie marched across a fallow field, scouting the mound rising in front of him. Around 500 square meters, with parts of the wall system visible along the edges of the site, it had not appeared previously in any ground-based archaeological survey. But hundred-year-old satellite imagery showed it clearly. Why had archaeologists never bothered to survey these sites properly? Working under primitive conditions, he supposed. Frankly, it was a wonder they managed to recover any data at all.

  With only an hour allotted to complete his work, Robbie wasted no time. He took off his silver metal backpack and popped open the top. Inside, nested among foam-walled compartments, he found dozens of round figures, each the width of a soda can—red, green, blue, and yellow. Robbie laid them out on the ground.

  He tapped each once, activating its “survey” mode, and took out a small box containing tiny multicolored machines the size of paper clips, a silver rod, and a frisbee-sized disk. Attaching the disk to the rod, he extended it to the ground and shook out the paper clip machines.

  “Wait,” Robbie said. They all started buzzing and lined up in a row. “Red go.”

  Red figures released their propellers and took off: half flew in rows across the site, half in set patterns in a 5-kilometer radius surrounding it. The timer started a 10-minute red-bot countdown. One eye on the clock, Robbie sat down cross-legged and brought up a holo-map on his visor screen. Already, it populated itself with the survey data while each red bot—equipped with LIDAR, thermal infrared, and hyperspectral sensing systems—detected subsurface architecture with near-complete accuracy. The third of the site covered with low vegetation was just as visible as the bare-naked rest.

  As 3-D images appeared on the holo-map, relic river courses and canals unfurled, with hypothesized timescales for their movement. Robbie nodded in satisfaction when most of the site’s near-surface architecture popped out, with hot spots for the mortuary, administrative, residential, and workshop areas. One of the buildings looked palatial.

  There were 40 minutes left till pickup. “Green go,” he said. The green bots whirred away. A few inches above the ground, flying through and around the vegetation, they transected the site in routes a few inches apart. On Robbie’s screen, the subsurface architecture emerged more clearly in 3-D. The whole site’s plan spread down, and down, to 8 meters below the surface. On-screen color gradations indicated early and later phases of construction, comparing buildings to an internal database of thousands of examples. Several dozen glowed brightly. Just 35 minutes left; barely enough time to squeeze in everything on the to-do list.

  “Blue go!” The blue bots flew over the highlighted buildings in groups of nine. Hovering a meter apart, the drones drilled holes with powerful lasers and fired pencil-wide probes 7 meters into the ground. Robbie waited while they sent out ultrasonic waves to take readings, and then moved over for the next unit.

  The probes sensed something, all focusing at once, and Robbie sat up. Structures appeared, modeled complete with all the objects and burials inside their walls; 90 percent of the rooms glowed brighter.

  “That’s a lot of hot spots
,” he muttered. He eyed the countdown, chewing his lip. Only 25 minutes left. “Probes retract. Go yellow, go digbots.”

  The buzzing row of tiny machines shot over to the exact locations of the hot spots and started digging. Yellow drones followed closely behind, hovering just above the entry points. Digbots burrowed down, scanned each burial, and took a series of samples. When a bot returned to the surface, it delivered ground bone to the yellow drones’ onboard spectrometers for DNA sequencing.

  Matching. Matching. Their chitter was constant, fevered, as they connected each deceased individual to local and regional family trees, each object to production sites here or hundreds of miles away, each pottery vessel and sherd to a database of thousands.

  Robbie watched the data bubble across his screen.

  “Fifteen until pickup,” purred the auto-remind on his countdown, but a flashing indicator grabbed his attention. He peered closer. A series of scrolls. And was that charring around some of them? He made a waving motion. Five specialist scanbots homed in on the buried archive to record the ancient words. As though Robbie’s screen had sucked them from the ground, the scrolls appeared, unrolling, revealing complete texts. Some had even been reused by scribes in antiquity, their ghostly layers spread hovering over the palimpsest.

  “Pickup imminent.”

  The icon for Robbie’s centralized database blinked green: mapping and scanning data complete. A few more minutes, and searchable patterns would emerge from the rendered data.

  “Bots home,” Robbie yelled across the site, switching each off when it flew in, to return it carefully to his backpack. A haunting alert-call made him look up: a primitive recording nearly two centuries old of Tutankhamun’s silver trumpet.1 “Great, right on time. Report.”

  “Scanning of regional and national site databases complete. 15 separate site-history hypotheses computing, iterations *beginning*. Histories 1–10 eliminated, percent likelihood less than 90. Of remaining 5, 4 agree with site histories up to abandonment in 1177. Abandonment model likelihoods are less than 94 percent likely, leaving one occupation model greater than 95 percent.” Robbie nodded, flicking through graphs.

  “Give me that one, then.”

  “Site occupation begins in 3225 BC, settlement with approximately 200 people, expands to small city of 2,000 in 2478 BC. Expansion due to shifting river course, with increased access to international trade goods and evidence of a very wealthy ruling class. In 2310 BC, a regional governor moves to set up an independent army—”

  “And seizes control?”

  “Correct. More than 50 cities in a 40-kilometer radius. He declares himself king, ruling for 20 years before his chief priest deposes him. Priest loses a major battle in 2290 BC. With 1 meter+ of silt accumulation, there is no ceramic debris, and no evidence of site occupation after that time for a 100-year period.”

  “Sounds like drought.”

  “Correct. A drought event 4,300 years ago causes large-scale site abandonment in the region. A 500-person town reappears ca. 1800 BC, with a local ruler, followed by periods of famine, disease, and burning ca. 1177 BC. With the construction of a major toll road, the site has 2,000+ inhabitants during the Roman Period. War causes slaughter of the younger to middle-aged men around 146 AD, disproportionately small evidence for remains of women and girls, all likely captured as slaves.”

  “Cheerful.”

  “I have not interpreted affective value. Would you like me to do this?” Robbie jumped.

  “No, no, thank you.” His midair swipe cleared the query box from the screen. “Finish up.”

  “A tiny settlement appears during the Umayyad period between 661 and 750 AD that continues to be occupied today.”

  Visualizations of the site and surrounding landscape appeared, evolving through the time periods to reflect the changes seen by the digbots, with regional maps showing trade hubs and natural resources, home countries of the invading armies, and the relic river courses.

  “Site history complete. Percent likelihood of error +/-2 percent.”

  Robbie cursed. Not the 1 percent he needed.

  “When will I learn to deploy the newest probe models?”

  “Unknown.”

  “Oh, quit it—session over.”

  A complete publication appeared, with sections on regional river systems, architectural phases, site pottery, skeletal remains and DNA, site development, growth, collapse, abandonment, and resettlement. Plans, maps, and reconstructions flashed across the screen. Among them, scanned sherds flew into place piece by piece, rebuilding a beautiful unguent jar.

  “And the best bit…” Robbie said, smiling. A complete breakdown of foodways across five millennia. It had been a long day, and his stomach grumbled.

  “Warning! Warning! Pickup overdue.”

  He stifled a curse, hitting ACCEPT: FINAL REPORT. “The boss is going to hate that 2 percent.” But right now, beer was more important.

  Robbie headed back to the landing spot. Sand blurred around him as the thrums of the unmanned aerial vehicle grew louder. He folded his robot avatar into a compact square around his backpack, and the vehicle’s magnetic extension picked him up.

  A second later, at ArchaeoVisiön HQ, Robbie took off his virtual-reality visor, shaking his head. Those references, in the final report, to a 2010 archaeological survey. Even an excavation report from a nearby site. So much data overlooked!

  And, all that dirt … The bacteria, the flies, months spent away from the comfort of his pod. Who would ever want to do that?

  He wrinkled his nose, blinking at the revolving unguent jar on-screen. Such a waste of time, removing objects from the ground. Every day, he patted the forehead of King Tut’s mask in the foyer as he walked in. Well, a perfect replica, 3-D printed. It’d even fool the experts. In gold, too, since the off-world mining really got going. Gold, lapis lazuli: it was all cheap as chips.

  “Real potatoes,” he murmured. “Now you’re talking.” He glanced at the hologram clock digits hanging in the air: just on time, for the fifth site completion of the day. Lunch wouldn’t interfere with the rest of the day’s site pickup schedule, but beer would have to wait. “Quotas, quotas,” he said, getting up.

  Over his canteen tray, he thought about that error rating. It shouldn’t dull his assessments. But what about his ranking? Third overall. He stabbed a cube with his fork and swallowed it a little too fast.

  “She’ll make me change out the bots for new ones,” he said to the dispenser unit. “The boss. But that’s fine, right? They’ve served their term.”

  But had he? A wall-to-wall screen behind the counter showed a ship’s construction site in real time. Rising through a spinning galaxy of automated movement, the explorer vessel grew like that jar. In a matter of months, the ship would launch to the Earth-size exoplanet, Ross 128 b.2 His own face rolled past on the screen—“Top-rated Archaeotech”: his chances were still good to be on that team.

  The top 10 ArchaeoVisiön employees would get to go to space. If ArchaeoVisiön could map a hundred large ancient sites a day in their entirety with 20 techs like him, then mapping ruins on other planets was within their reach. During the United Nations Exoplanet Mission prototype contract, they had already logged 10,000 sites.

  “And we’ve got another month to go,” he said, scraping up the last few fragments of cube.

  “Incorrect,” said the dispenser unit. “Canteen service closes in ten minutes.”

  He stared blankly at it, then looked up at the screen. Humans had survived and thrived and failed in ancient Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and so many other places, yet now Robbie awaited orders to head to the stars.

  And what would any of the people he’d recorded have thought about that?

  “Whoa, there, Robbie,” he said, feeding his tray back into the machine. “You’re not some wacko old-school archaeologist.” Like the screen said, “Archaeotech.” And the tech was what had drawn him in. All the latest toys. Good pay, a chance of a life off-world …

  Other worlds he
ld the real mysteries. Nearly every site on Earth was mapped.

  “It’s all just more of the same.” He sighed.

  His on-screen face rolled back around. Smiling, confident. Restless. Not like the perfectly rendered naivety of his ancient university lecturers, beamed in hologram from his watch. Outside class, he and his friends had laughed about that generation.

  Back in 2060, the last of the old-timers, digging in the dirt like creaky bots. Hanging up the last trowels. All about a hundred years old when they recorded their classes.

  That look on their faces, though, when they talked about finding something, about the camaraderie in the field or the first extraterrestrial radio waves recorded in the 2070s. Yeah, he’d laughed. He stared up at that vessel rising from the construction site and imagined finding traces of ancient civilizations in space, not knowing how much like those professors he looked.

  The truth wasn’t in the ground anymore. It was out there.

  Welcome Back to the Present!

  This sounds completely fantastical, like the story from someone who has, as my kindergarten teacher once said, “more interest in science fiction than science.” Not much has changed, clearly. During my 1980s childhood, Star Wars cross-fertilized Indiana Jones, and planted seeds deep in my head that grew into a real research interest. I’ve spent nearly all of this book talking about the Earth as seen from space, and even more about where we’ve been archaeologically, but not yet told you where we might go.

  It seems to me, after 20 years of study and research, that archaeologists spend far more time imagining the past than dreaming about the future of the field. Perhaps we become too bogged down in the details or fearful of taking a risk where we might be proven wrong—the horror!

  Dreaming Big Dreams

  But if we allow ourselves to dream of the future of archaeology, however briefly, we can see that archaeologists, scientists, doctors, and roboticists already use every form of technology I described above. The technologies might not be miniaturized, or as mobile, or have that number of sensors attached, but thinking through how much and how rapidly the technologies we utilize today have evolved, I can feel that world of 2119 approaching.