Archaeology from Space

by Sarah Parcak

  8.    An excellent TV program that showcases archaeological efforts is Time Team, shown in the United States (PBS) and United Kingdom (Channel 4). One of the best episodes is set here—“The Real Vikings: A Time Team Special,” Tim Taylor, creator and series producer, and Philip Clarke, executive producer (2010).

  9.    Anna Wodzińska, A Manual of Egyptian Pottery. Naqada III—Middle Kingdom (Boston: Ancient Egypt Research Associates, 2010), http://www.aeraweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/egyptian-pottery-v2.pdf, accessed 30 January 2018.

  10.  Ralph Blumenthal, “NASA Adds to Evidence of Mysterious Ancient Earthworks,” New York Times, 30 October 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/science/nasa-adds-to-evidence-of-mysterious-ancient-earthworks.html, accessed 30 January 2018.

  11.  Orri Vésteinsson and Thomas H. McGovern, “The Peopling of Iceland,” Norwegian Archaeological Review, vol. 45, no. 2 (2012): 206–18, https://doi.org/10.1080/00293652.2012.721792.

  12.  Vésteinsson and McGovern, “The Peopling of Iceland.”

  13.  Thomas Ellwood, The Book of the Settlement of Iceland: Translated from the Original Icelandic of Ari the Learned (Kendal, Cumbria, UK: T. Wilson, 1898); Orri Vésteinsson et al., “The Settlement Exhibition—the Settlement of Iceland,” Reykjavik City Museum, http://reykjavik871.is/, accessed 8 March 2018; John Steinberg et al., “The Viking Age Settlement Pattern of Langholt, North Iceland: Results of the Skagafjörður Archaeological Settlement Survey,” Journal of Field Archaeology, vol. 41, no. 4 (2016): 389–412, https://doi.org/10.1080/00934690.2016.1203210.

  14.  See “English Summary,” https://www.islendingabok.is/English.jsp, accessed 7 March 2018.

  15.  “Kissing Cousins? Icelandic App Warns If Your Date Is a Relative,” Associated Press, 18 April 2013, www.cbc.ca/news/business/kissing-cousins-icelandic-app-warns-if-your-date-is-a-relative-1.1390256, accessed 5 March 2018.

  16.  Rose Eveleth, “Icelanders Protest a Road That Would Disturb Fairies,” Smithsonian SmartNews, 15 January 2014, www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/icelanders-protest-road-would-disturb-fairies-180949359/, accessed 5 March 2018.

  17.  “The Vikings Uncovered,” executive producers Eamon Hardy and Cameron Balbirnie, BBC One (UK) and PBS America (US), 2016.

  18.  Brian N. Damiata et al., “Subsurface Imaging a Viking-Age Churchyard Using GPR with TDR: Direct Comparison to the Archaeological Record from an Excavated Site in Northern Iceland,” Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, vol. 12 (2017): 244–56, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2017.01.004.

  19.  Sveinbjörn Þórðarson, “The Icelandic Saga Database,” http://sagadb.org/, accessed 5 March 2018.

  20.  “The Settlement Exhibition,” Reykjavik City Museum, http://borgarsogusafn.is/en/the-settlement-exhibition/about, accessed 4 March 2018.

  21.  Grassland replaced birch around AD 900 during a major environmental shift. See Orri Vésteinsson and Thomas H. McGovern, “The Peopling of Iceland,” Norwegian Archaeological Review, vol. 45, no. 2 (2012): 206–18, https://doi.org/10.1080/00293652.2012.721792.

  22.  Orri Vésteinsson et al., “The Settlement Exhibition—Aðalstræti: The Longhouse,” Reykjavik City Museum, http://reykjavik871.is/, accessed 8 March 2018.

  23.  Steinberg et al., “Viking Age Settlement Pattern of Langholt, North Iceland.”

  24.  Iceland’s in-country archaeological database is called ísleif.

  25.  Steinberg et al., “Viking Age Settlement Pattern of Langholt, North Iceland.”

  26.  Jeroen De Reu et al., “From Low Cost UAV Survey to High Resolution Topographic Data: Developing Our Understanding of a Medieval Outport of Bruges,” Archaeological Prospection, vol. 23, no. 4 (2016): 335–46, https://doi.org/10.1002/arp.1547.

  27.  Called relief displacement. See Thomas R. Lyons and Thomas Eugene Avery, Remote Sensing: A Handbook for Archeologists and Cultural Resource Managers (Washington, DC: Cultural Resources Management Division, National Park Service, US Department of the Interior, 1977).

  28.  Barbara E. Crawford and Beverley Ballin Smith, The Biggings, Papa Stour, Shetland: The History and Excavation of a Royal Norwegian Farm, Monograph Series, ed. Alexandra Shepard (Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi, 1999).

  29.  Anna Ritchie, “Great Sites: Jarlshof,” British Archaeology, vol. 69 (2003); “Jarlshof Prehistoric and Norse Settlement: History,” Historic Environment Scotland (2018), www.historicenvironment.scot/visit-a-place/places/jarlshof-prehistoric-and-norse-settlement/history/, accessed 10 March 2018.

  30.  Athos Agapiou et al., “Optimum Temporal and Spectral Window for Monitoring Crop Marks over Archaeological Remains in the Mediterranean Region,” Journal of Archaeological Science, vol. 40, no. 3 (2013): 1479–92, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2012.10.036.

  31.  Christina Petty, Warp Weighted Looms: Then and Now—Anglo-Saxon and Viking Archaeological Evidence and Modern Practitioners (PhD diss., University of Manchester, 2014).

  32.  Barbara Crawford, A Progress Report of the First Season’s Excavation at “Da Biggins,” Papa Stour, Shetland (Edinburgh: Scottish Society for Northern Studies, 1978).

  33.  Paul Nicholson and Ian Shaw, Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

  34.  Anna Linderholm et al., “Diet and Status in Birka: Stable Isotopes and Grave Goods Compared,” Antiquity, vol. 82, no. 316 (2008): 446–61, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00096939.

  35.  Crawford, Progress Report of the First Season’s Excavation at “Da Biggins”; Barbara Crawford, A Progress Report on Excavations at “Da Biggins,” Papa Stour, Shetland, 1978 (Edinburgh: Scottish Society for Northern Studies, 1979); Jon A. Hjaltalin and Gilbert Goudie, The Orkneyinga Saga: Translated from the Icelandic (Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1873). A translation of the document can be seen in Crawford and Smith, The Biggings, 48.

  36.  Crawford, Progress Report on Excavations at “Da Biggins.”

  37.  Simon Keay et al., “The Canal System and Tiber Delta at Portus. Assessing the Nature of Man-Made Waterways and Their Relationship with the Natural Environment,” Water History, vol. 6, no.1 (2014): 11–30, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12685-013-0094-y.

  38.  Keay, “Canal System and Tiber Delta at Portus.”

  39.  Simon Keay et al., Portus: An Archaeological Survey of the Port of Imperial Rome, Archaeological Monographs of the British School at Rome (London: British School at Rome, 2006).

  40.  Simon Keay et al., “Archaeological Fieldwork Reports: The Portus Project,” Papers of the British School at Rome, vol. 76 (2008), 331–32, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068246200003767; “Portus Project,” University of Southampton, http://www.portusproject.org/, accessed 11 March 2018; Simon Keay et al., “The Role of Integrated Geophysical Survey Methods in the Assessment of Archaeological Landscapes: The Case of Portus,” Archaeological Prospection, vol. 16, no. 3 (2009): 154–66, https://doi.org/10.1002/arp.358.

  41.  Shen-En Qian, “Enhancing Space-Based Signal-to-Noise Ratios Without Redesigning the Satellite,” SPIE Newsroom, 2011, http://spie.org/newsroom/3421-enhancing-space-based-signal-to-noise-ratios-without-redesigning-the-satellite?SSO=1, accessed 3 March 2018.

  42.  According to the weather history at www.timeanddate.com/weather/italy/rome/historic?month=9&year=2011, it didn’t rain once in August or September in Rome.

  43.  Rosa Lasaponara and Nicola Masini, “Detection of Archaeological Crop Marks by Using Satellite QuickBird Multispectral Imagery,” Journal of Archaeological Science, vol. 34, no. 2 (2007): 214–21, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2006.04.014.

  44.  Simon Keay et al., “High Resolution Space and Ground-Based Remote Sensing and Implications for Landscape Archaeology: The Case from Portus, Italy,” Journal of Archaeological Science, vol. 52 (2014): 277–92, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2014.08.010.

  45.  Keay, “High Resolution
Space and Ground-Based Remote Sensing.”

  Chapter 4

  1.    Kent V. Flannery, “The Golden Marshalltown: A Parable for the Archaeology of the 1980s,” American Anthropologist, n.s., vol. 84, no. 2 (1982): 265–78.

  2.    Kenneth L. Feder, Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).

  3.    Steven L. Cox, “A Norse Penny from Maine,” Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga, ed. William W. Fitzhugh and Elisabeth I. Ward (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000), 206–7; Erik Wahlgren, The Vikings and America (London: Thames and Hudson, 1986), 146.

  4.    William Fitzhugh, “Vikings in America: Runestone, Relics, and Revisionism,” Minerva: The International Magazine of Art and Archaeology, vol. 11 (July/August 2000): 8–12.

  5.    Jesse L. Byock, Viking Age Iceland (New York: Penguin, 2001).

  6.    “Eirik the Red’s Saga,” trans. Keneva Kunz, The Sagas of Icelanders, ed. Örnólfur Thorsson and Bernard Scudder (New York: Penguin Books, 2001).

  7.    William Fitzhugh, “Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga,” AnthroNotes: Museum of Natural History Publication for Educators (Smithsonian Museum of Natural History), vol. 22, no. 1 (2000): 1–9.

  8.    Wahlgren, Vikings and America, 91; Peter Schledermann, “A.D. 1000: East Meets West,” in Fitzhugh and Ward, Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga, 189; Magnus Rafnsson, “Archaeological Excavations at Qassiarsuk, 2005–2006 (field report),” NV nr, 03–07: Náttúrustofa Vestfjarða, NABO, Grønlands Nationalmuseum & Arkiv. 2007, https://doi.org/10.6067/XCV86H4FRS.

  9.    Wahlgren, Vikings and America, 26, n. 21.

  10.  Eli Kintisch, “Why Did Greenland’s Vikings Disappear?” Science, 10 November 2016, http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/11/why-did-greenland-s-vikings-disappear, accessed 10 March 2018.

  11.  Robert Kellogg, The Sagas of the Icelanders (New York: Penguin Books, 2001).

  12.  Wahlgren, Vikings and America, 90–91.

  13.  Kellogg, Sagas of the Icelanders.

  14.  Birgitta Wallace, “The Norse in Newfoundland: L’Anse aux Meadows and Vinland,” Newfoundland Studies, vol. 19, no. 1 (2003): 5–43.

  15.  Wahlgren, Vikings and America, 92.

  16.  Mats G. Larsson, “The Vinland Sagas and the Actual Characteristics of Eastern Canada: Some Comparisons with Special Attention to the Accounts of the Later Explorers,” Vinland Revisited: The Norse World at the Turn of the First Millennium. Selected Papers from the Viking Millennium International Symposium, 15–24 September 2000, Newfoundland and Labrador, ed. Shannon Lewis-Simpson (St. John’s, NL: Historic Sites Association of Newfoundland and Labrador, 2003), 396, fig. 5, and 398.

  17.  Magnus Magnusson, “Vinland: The Ultimate Outpost,” in Lewis-Simpson, Vinland Revisited, 94.

  18.  Anne Stine Ingstad, The Norse Discovery of America, Volume One: Excavations of a Norse Settlement at l’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland 1961–1968, trans. Elizabeth S. Seeberg (Oslo: Norwegian University Press [via Oxford University Press], 1985); Wahlgren, Vikings and America, 93.

  19.  Ingstad, Norse Discovery of America, Volume One.

  20.  Charles S. Lindsay, “A Preliminary Report on the 1974 Excavations of Norse Buildings D and E at L’Anse aux Meadows” (unpublished report on file, Provincial Archaeology Office, Confederation Building, St. John’s, NL, 1975).

  21.  Helge Ingstad, The Norse Discovery of America, Volume Two: The Historical Background and the Evidence of the Norse Settlement Discovered in Newfoundland, trans. Elizabeth S. Seeberg (Oslo: Norwegian University Press [via Oxford University Press], 1985).

  22.  Janet E. Kay, Norse in Newfoundland: A Critical Examination of Archaeological Research at the Norse Site at L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, British Archaeological Reports International Series 2339 (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2012), 44–45, figs. 3.1–5.

  23.  Davide Zori, “Nails, Rivets and Clench Bolts: A Case for Typological Clarity,” Archaeologia Islandica, vol. 6 (2007): 32–47.

  24.  Kay, Norse in Newfoundland, 44–45, figs. 3.1–5; Birgitta L. Wallace, Westward Vikings: The Saga of l’Anse aux Meadows, rev. ed. (St. John’s, NL: Historic Sites Association of Newfoundland and Labrador, 2012).

  25.  Kay, Norse in Newfoundland, 44–45, figs. 3.1–5.

  26.  Kay, Norse in Newfoundland, 59.

  27.  Kay, Norse in Newfoundland, 45.

  28.  Wallace, Westward Vikings.

  29.  Birgitta L. Wallace, “The Later Excavations at L’Anse aux Meadows,” in Lewis-Simpson, Vinland Revisited, 165–80.

  30.  Donald H. Holly Jr., History in the Making: The Archaeology of the Eastern Subarctic, Issues in Eastern Woodlands Archaeology (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2013), 114; Birgitta L. Wallace, “The Viking Settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows,” in Fitzhugh and Ward, Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga, 216, fig. 14.21.

  31.  Holly, History in the Making, 113–14 and 115, fig. 5.2; Kay, Norse in Newfoundland, 66; Birgitta Wallace, “The Norse in Newfoundland: L’Anse aux Meadows and Vinland,” Newfoundland Studies, vol. 19, no. 1 (2003): 5–43.

  32.  Kay, Norse in Newfoundland, 66; Holly, History in the Making, 113–14.

  33.  Urve Linnamae, The Dorset Culture: A Comparative Study in Newfoundland and the Arctic, Technical Papers of the Newfoundland Museum, no. 1 (St. John’s, NL: Newfoundland Museum, 1975); Lisa Mae Fogt, The Excavation and Analysis of a Dorset Palaeoeskimo Dwelling at Cape Ray, Newfoundland (master’s thesis, Department of Anthropology, Memorial University, St. John’s, NL, 1998).

  34.  James P. Howley, The Beothucks or Red Indians, The Aboriginal Inhabitants of Newfoundland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915; repr. Toronto: Prospero Books, 2000), 162.

  35.  Ralph T. Pastore, Shanawdithit’s People: The Archaeology of the Beothuks (St. John’s, NL: Atlantic Archaeology, 1992).

  36.  M. A. P. Renouf and Trevor Bell, “Maritime Archaic Site Locations on the Island of Newfoundland,” The Archaic of the Far Northeast, ed. David Sanger and M. A. P. Renouf (Orono: University of Maine Press, 2006), 1–46; Trevor Bell and M. A. P. Renouf, “Prehistoric Cultures, Reconstructed Coasts: Maritime Archaic Indian Site Distribution,” World Archaeology, vol. 35, no. 3 (2004): 350–70, https://doi.org/10.1080/0043824042000185766.

  37.  K. L. Kvamme, “Magnetometry: Nature’s Gift to Archaeology,” Remote Sensing in Archaeology: An Explicitly North American Perspective, ed. Jay K. Johnson (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006), 205–33.

  38.  John J. Mannion, “Settlers and Traders in Western Newfoundland,” The Peopling of Newfoundland: Essays in Historical Geography, ed. John J. Mannion (St. John’s, NL: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1977).

  39.  Peter E. Pope, “Newfoundland and Labrador, 1497–1697,” A Short History of Newfoundland and Labrador, Newfoundland Historical Society (Portugal Cove–St. Philip’s, NL: Boulder Publications, 2008), 23–48.

  40.  “100 Years of Geodetic Survey in Canada,” Natural Resources Canada, http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/earth-sciences/geomatics/geodetic-reference-systems/canadian-spatial-reference-system/9110, accessed 7 May 2018.

  41.  Martin Appelt et al., “Late Dorset,” The Oxford Handbook of the Prehistoric Arctic, ed. T. Max Friesen and Owen K. Mason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 783–805.

  42.  Edward Chappell, Voyage of His Majesty’s Ship Rosamond to Newfoundland and the Southern Coast of Labrador, of which Countries no account has been published by any British traveler since the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (London: J. Mawman, 1818).

  43.  Grant Head, Eighteenth Century Newfoundland: A Geographer’s Perspective, Carlton Library Series no. 99 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1976).

  44.  Birgitta Wallace, “St. Paul’s Inlet—the Norse Hóp Site?” (report on file, Historic Resources
Division, St. John’s, NL, 2003); Donald Wieman, “32 Clues Point to Barachois, Newfoundland as The Vinland Sagas’ Settlement of ‘Hop,’” Lavalhallalujah (blog), 20 October 2015, https://lavalhallalujah.wordpress.com/2015/10/20/32-clues-point-to-barachois-as-hop/, accessed 2 May 2017.

  45.  Head, Eighteenth Century Newfoundland.

  46.  Scott Brande, personal communication, November 2016.

  47.  “What Is OSL Dating?” Baylor University, Department of Geosciences, https://www.baylor.edu/geology/index.php?id=868084, accessed 5 May 2018.