Archaeology from Space

by Sarah Parcak

  47.  Enrico Borgogno Mondino et al., “High Resolution Satellite Images for Archeological Applications: The Karima Case Study (Nubia Region, Sudan),” European Journal of Remote Sensing, vol. 45, no. 1 (2012): 243–59, https://doi.org/10.5721/EuJRS20124522.

  48.  Amy Maxmen, “A Race Against Time to Excavate an Ancient African Civilization: Archaeologists in Nubia Are Struggling Against Erosion, Desertification, and Government Plans to Develop the Land,” Atlantic, 23 February 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/erosion-and-development-threaten-ancient-nubian-sites/554003/, accessed 6 April 2018.

  49.  David J. Mattingly and Martin Sterry, “The First Towns in the Central Sahara,” Antiquity, vol. 87, no. 336 (2013): 503–18, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00049097.

  50.  Carrie Hirtz, “Contributions of GIS and Satellite-Based Remote Sensing to Landscape Archaeology in the Middle East,” Journal of Archaeological Research, vol. 22, no. 3 (2014): 229–76, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10814-013-9072-2.

  51.  Bjoern H. Menze and Jason A. Ur, “Mapping Patterns of Long-Term Settlement in Northern Mesopotamia at a Large Scale,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 109, no. 14 (2012): E778–87, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1115472109.

  52.  Warwick Ball and Jean-Claude Gardin, Archaeological Gazetteer of Afghanistan, Synthèse, no. 8 (Paris: Éditions Recherche sur les civilisations, 1982).

  53.  David Thomas, personal communication, 8 November 2018.

  54.  David C. Thomas et al., “The Archaeological Sites of Afghanistan in Google Earth,” AARGnews, no. 37 (September 2008): 22–30.

  55.  Andrew Lawler, “Spy Satellites Are Revealing Afghanistan’s Lost Empires,” Science, 13 December 2017, http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/12/spy-satellites-are-revealing-afghanistan-s-lost-empires, accessed 2 April 2017.

  56.  David Kennedy and Robert Bewley, “APAAME: Aerial Photographic Archive for Archaeology in the Middle East,” APAAME, http://www.apaame.org/, accessed 4 April 2018.

  57.  David Kennedy and Robert Bewley, “Aerial Archaeology in Jordan,” Antiquity, vol. 83, no. 319 (2009): 69–81, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00098094.

  58.  “EAMENA: Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa,” University of Oxford, 2015, www.eamena.org, accessed 31 March 2018.

  59.  “Mega-Jordan: The National Heritage Documentation and Management System,” MEGA-Jordan, Getty Conservation Institute and World Monuments Fund, 2010, http://www.megajordan.org, accessed 31 March 2018.

  60.  I went to the website and selected all site types, finding more than 68,000 sites listed, but sites are listed multiple times across categories and time periods. It is likely that there are ca. 27,000 sites, according to direct information from the Department of Antiquities. Stephen Savage, personal communication, 8 April 2018.

  61.  Rosa Lasaponara et al., “On the LiDAR Contribution for the Archaeological and Geomorphological Study of a Deserted Medieval Village in Southern Italy,” Journal of Geophyics and Engineering, vol. 7, no. 2 (2010): 155, https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-2132/7/2/S01.

  62.  R. Coluzzi et al., “On the LiDAR Contribution for Landscape Archaeology and Palaeoenvironmental Studies: The Case Study of Bosco dell’Incoronata (Southern Italy),” Advances in Geosciences, vol. 24 (2010): 125–32, https://doi.org/doi:10.5194/adgeo-24-125-2010.

  63.  Paolo Mozzi et al., “The Roman City of Altinum, Venice Lagoon, from Remote Sensing and Geophysical Prospection,” Archaeological Prospection, vol. 23, no. 1 (2016): 27–44, https://doi.org/10.1002/arp.1520.

  64.  “Learn the Knowledge of London,” Transport for London, https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/taxis-and-private-hire/licensing/learn-the-knowledge-of-london, accessed 3 April 2018.

  65.  “ARCHI UK,” Archaeological Data Service, ARCHI UK, http://www.archiuk.com/, accessed 1 April 2018.

  66.  “Lasers Reveal ‘Lost’ Roman Roads,” GOV.UK, 3 February 2016, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/lasers-reveal-lost-roman-roads, accessed 2 April 2018.

  67.  Maev Kennedy, “‘Millennia of Human Activity’: Heatwave Reveals Lost UK Archaeological Sites,” Guardian, 14 August 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/aug/15/millennia-of-human-activity-heatwave-reveals-lost-uk-archaeological-sites, accessed 8 November 2018.

  68.  Erwin Meylemans et al., “It’s All in the Pixels: High-Resolution Remote-Sensing Data and the Mapping and Analysis of the Archaeological and Historical Landscape,” Internet Archaeology, vol. 43 (2017), https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.43.2.

  69.  Nick Allen, “1,000-Year-Old Fishing Trap Found on Google Earth,” Telegraph, 16 March 2009, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5000835/1000-year-old-fishing-trap-found-on-Google-Earth.html, accessed 7 April 2018.

  70.  Laura Rocchio, “Satellites and Shipwrecks: Landsat Satellite Spots Foundered Ships in Coastal Waters,” NASA, 11 March 2016, https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/landsat-spots-shipwrecks-in-coastal-waters, accessed 5 April 2018.

  71.  “Drones Seek Out Lost Shipwrecks Below Lake Huron.” DroneDeploy (blog), 20 September 2017, https://blog.dronedeploy.com/drones-seek-out-lost-shipwrecks-below-lake-huron-1420f8b407b4, accessed 5 April 2018.

  72.  “Trident Underwater Drone,” OpenROV, https://www.openrov.com/, accessed 4 April 2018.

  73.  Toshiko Kaneda and Carl Haub, “How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth?” Population Reference Bureau, https://www.prb.org/howmanypeoplehaveeverlivedonearth/, accessed 7 April 2018.

  74.  Richard Gray, “How Can We Manage Earth’s Land?” BBC Futurenow, 29 June 2017, http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170628-how-to-best-manage-earths-land, accessed 7 April 2018.

  Chapter 7

  1.    David Jeffreys and Ana Tavares, “The Historic Landscape of Early Dynastic Memphis,” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts Abteilung Kairo, vol. 50 (1994): 143–73.

  2.    I. E. S. Edwards, The Pyramids of Egypt, 5th ed. (New York: Harmondsworth, 1993).

  3.    Mark Lehner, The Complete Pyramids (London: Thames and Hudson, 1997), 115.

  4.    For a comprehensive overview of administration in the Old Kingdom, see Klaus Baer, Rank and Title in the Old Kingdom: The Structure of the Egyptian Administration in the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960).

  5.    James P. Allen, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature Press, 2015).

  6.    Gregory Mumford, “Tell Ras Budran (Site 345): Defining Egypt’s Eastern Frontier and Mining Operations in South Sinai During the Late Old Kingdom (Early EB IV/MB I),” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, no. 342 (May 2006): 13–67; Gregory Mumford, “Ongoing Investigations at a Late Old Kingdom Coastal Fort at Ras Budran in South Sinai,” Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections, vol. 4, no. 4 (2012): 20–28, https://doi.org/10.2458/azu_jaei_v04i4_mumford.

  7.    Archaeologists have noted Old Kingdom sherds at Tell Abassiya, Tell Haddidin, Tell Iswid North, Tell Iswid South, Tell Hasanin, Tell Umm el Zayat, Tell Mashala, Tell el-Akhdar, Tell Dirdir, and Tell Gherir (Edwin C. M. van den Brink et al., “A Geo-Archaeological Survey in the East Delta, Egypt: The First Two Seasons, a Preliminary Report,” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts Abteilung Kairo, vol. 43 [1987]: 4–31; Edwin C. M. van den Brink et al., “The Amsterdam University Survey Expedition to the East Nile Delta [1984–1986],” The Archaeology of the Nile Delta: Problems and Priorities, ed. Edwin van den Brink [Amsterdam: Netherlands Foundation for Archaeological Research in Egypt, 1988], 65–114); Tell Diba, Tell Farkha (Jean Leclant and Anne Minault-Gout, “Fouilles et travaux en Égypte et au Soudan, 1997–1998. Seconde partie,” Orientalia, vol. 69 [2000]: 141–70); Abu Daoud (Marek Chlodnicki et al., “The Nile Delta in Transition: A View from Tell el-Farkha,” The Nile Delta in Transition, 4th–3rd Millennium B.C. Proceedings of the Seminar H
eld in Cairo, 21–24 October 1990, at the Netherlands Institute of Archaeology and Arabic Studies, ed. Edwin C. M. van den Brink [Tel Aviv: Edwin C. M. van den Brink, 1992], 171–90); and Geziret el-Faras (Van den Brink et al., “A Geo-Archaeological Survey in the East Delta, Egypt,” 20; Van den Brink et al., “The Amsterdam University Survey Expedition to the East Nile Delta [1984–1986]”). Tell Ibrahim Awad has an Old Kingdom settlement, cemetery, and evidence for a temple deposit (Willem M. van Haarlem, “Temple Deposits at Tell Ibrahim Awad II—An Update,” Göttinger Miszellen, vol. 154 [1996]: 31–34). Mendes contains a necropolis measuring 150,000 square miles, with a settlement and a large temple complex (Donald B. Redford, Excavations at Mendes: Volume I. The Royal Necropolis [Leiden: Brill, 2004]; Donald B. Redford, City of the Ram-Man: The Story of Ancient Mendes [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010]). The survey discovered several previously unrecorded sites with Old Kingdom pottery at the sites of Tell Tarha, Tell Museya, Tell Gabar, and Tell Sharufa. The construction of a water filtration plant has obscured Tell Tebilla’s Old Kingdom strata but yielded ex-situ potsherds (Gregory Mumford, “The First Intermediate Period: Unravelling a ‘Dark Age’ at Mendes and Tell Tebilla,” Akhenaten Temple Project Newsletter, no. 1 [2000]: 3–4). Old Kingdom sherds appeared at Tell Fagi, Tell el-Ein (Van den Brink et al., “A Geo-Archaeological Survey in the East Delta, Egypt,” 23); and Tell Mara (Van den Brink et al., “The Amsterdam University Survey Expedition to the East Nile Delta [1984–1986]”). Kufr Nigm has extensive structures visible within the excavation units (Mohammed I. Bakr, “The New Excavations at Ezbet et-Tell, Kufr Nigm: The First Season [1984],” in Van den Brink, The Archaeology of the Nile Delta: Problems and Priorities, 49–62).

  8.    Gregory Mumford, The Late Old Kingdom to First Intermediate Period Settlement at Tell er-Ru’ba (Mendes) (forthcoming).

  9.    Seen in the 2003 surface survey.

  10.  Van den Brink et al., “A Geo-Archaeological Survey in the East Delta, Egypt,” 20.

  11.  Willem van Haarlem, “Tell Ibrahim Awad,” Egyptian Archaeology, vol. 18 (2001): 33–35.

  12.  For a comprehensive study on ancient Egyptian materials, see Paul T. Nicholson and Ian Shaw, eds., Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technologies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

  13.  Rushdi Said, Geological Evolution of the Nile Valley (New York: Springer, 1988), 1–7.

  14.  Rushdi Said, The River Nile: Geology, Hydrology and Utilization (Oxford and New York: Pergamon Press, 1993), 1–7.

  15.  Gregory Mumford, “New Investigations at Tell Tebilla in the Mendesian Nome,” Akhenaten Temple Project Newsletter, vol. 2 (2000): 1–3.

  16.  If you take a core sample on any settlement site in the Delta or Nile Valley, and you go deep enough, you’ll hit sand. That’s because Egypt’s original population settled on sandy mounds called gezirahs, or “turtlebacks.” The formation of gezirahs is connected to Late Pleistocene glaciation. The exact date of gezirah formation is not known. When the subpolar glaciers melted during the Late Pleistocene (38,000–12,000 BC), the height of the Mediterranean increased more than 100 meters. That put the coastline 50 kilometers inland from where it is today. The above-sea-level height of the land increased more than 25 meters from the coastline to present-day Mit Rahina (Memphis), and the increase in water caused this sloping surface to erode away. Eventually, the alluvium carried down the Nile created lagoons due to its volume. The gezirahs on which so many Deltaic settlements were formed began to emerge in this Late Pleistocene Period as parts of the Delta eroded away, caused by the gradual dropping of the sea level following the previous increase. Karl Butzer took a number of deep cores in the Delta, from Alexandria to Port Said. The later Paleolithic record can be found 10 meters below the present surface. Karl W. Butzer, “Geoarchaeological Implications of Recent Research in the Nile Delta,” Egypt and the Levant: Interrelations from the 4th Through Early 3rd Millennium BCE, ed. Edwin C. M. van den Brink and Thomas Evan Levy (London: Leicester University Press, 2002), 83–97.

  17.  Lehner, Complete Pyramids, 115.

  18.  John Coleman Darnell, “The Message of King Wahankh Antef II to Khety, Ruler of Heracleopolis,” Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde, vol. 124, no. 2 (1997): 101–8.

  19.  Detlef Franke, “The Career of Khnumhotep III of Beni Hasan and the So-called ‘Decline of the Nomarchs,’” Middle Kingdom Studies, ed. Stephen Quirke (New Malden, ∆255Surrey: SIA Publishing, 1991), 51–67; Labib Habachi, Elephantine IV. The Sanctuary of Heqaib, Deutsches Archäeologisches Institut, Abteilung Cairo, Archäeologische Veröffentlichungen, 33 (Mainz: Phillip von Zabern, 1985); Percy Newberry, El Bersheh, Part I (The Tomb of Tehuti-hetep) (London: The Egypt Exploration Fund, 1895, 33; repr. Phillip von Zabern: Mainz, 1985); P. Newberry, El-Berhseh I The Tomb of Djeuty-hetep (London, 1895).

  20.  Jaromir Malek, “The Old Kingdom (ca. 2686–2160 BC),” The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, ed. Ian Shaw (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 89–117; Stephan Seidlmayer, “First Intermediate Period (ca. 2160–2055 BC),” in Shaw, Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, 118–47.

  21.  Malek, “The Old Kingdom (ca. 2686–2160 BC).”

  22.  Barbara Bell, “Climate and the History of Egypt: The Middle Kingdom,” American Journal of Archaeology, vol. 79, no. 3 (1975): 223–69, https://doi.org/10.2307/503481; Barbara Bell, “The Dark Ages in Ancient History. I. The First Dark Age in Egypt,” American Journal of Archaeology, vol. 75, no. 1 (1971): 1–26, https://doi.org/10.2307/503678; Barbara Bell, “The Oldest Record of the Nile Floods,” Geographical Journal, vol. 136, no. 4 (1970): 569–73; Harvey Weiss and Raymond S. Bradley, “What Drives Societal Collapse?” Science, vol. 291, no. 5504 (2001): 609–10, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1058775; Fekri Hassan, “The Fall of the Egyptian Old Kingdom,” BBC, 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/apocalypse_egypt_01.shtml, accessed 5 May 2018; Kent R. Weeks, The Illustrated Guide to Luxor (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2005), 35.

  23.  Said, River Nile: Geology, Hydrology and Utilization, 165.

  24.  Weiss and Bradley, “What Drives Societal Collapse?” 609–10.

  25.  Françoise Gasse, “Hydrological Changes in the African Tropics Since the Last Glacial Maximum,” Quaternary Science Reviews, vol. 19, nos. 1–5 (2000): 189–212, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-3791(99)00061-X.

  26.  Michael D. Krom et al., “Nile River Sediment Fluctuations over the Past 7000 Yrs and Their Key Role in Sapropel Development,” Geology, vol. 30, no. 1 (2002): 71–74, https://doi.org/10.1130/0091-7613(2002)030 < 0071:NRSFOT>2.0.CO;2.

  27.  Said, River Nile: Geology, Hydrology and Utilization, chapter 5.

  28.  Joe Morrissey and Mary Lou Guerinot, “Iron Uptake and Transport in Plants: The Good, the Bad, and the Ionome,” Chemical Reviews, vol. 109, no. 10 (2009): 4553–67, https://doi.org/10.1021/cr900112r.

  29.  Jean-Daniel Stanley et al., “Short Contribution: Nile Flow Failure at the End of the Old Kingdom, Egypt: Strontium Isotopic and Petrologic Evidence,” Geoarchaeology, vol. 18, no. 3, (2003): 395–402, https://doi.org/10.1002/gea.10065.

  30.  Thomas von der Way, Tell el-Fara’in/Buto I, Archäologische Veröffentlichungen (Deutsches Archäologisches Institut. Abteilung Kairo), 83 (Mainz: Philip Von Zabern, 1997); Thomas von der Way, “Excavations at Tell el-Fara’in/Buto in 1987–1989,” in Van den Brink, Nile Delta in Transition, 1–10.

  31.  For a detailed overview of the Buto chronology, see von der Way, Tell el-Fara’in/Buto I.

  32.  Lisa Giddy and David Jeffreys, “Memphis 1991,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, vol. 78 (1992): 1–11, https://doi.org/10.2307/3822063.

  33.  Nicole Alexanian and Stephan Johannes Seidelmeyer, “Die Residenznekropole von Daschur Erster Grabungsbericht,” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Abteilung Kairo, vol. 58 (2002): 1–29.

  34.  William Ellis, “Africa
’s Sahel: The Stricken Land,” National Geographic Magazine, August 1987, 140–79.

  35.  Harvey Weiss, “Beyond the Younger Dryas,” Environmental Disaster and the Archaeology of Human Response, ed. Garth Bawden and Richard Martin Reycraft, Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, Anthropological Papers no. 7 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 2000), 75–98. At the Soreq Cave in the Judean hills of Israel, deposits reveal a 20 to 30 percent precipitation decrease between 4,200 and 4,000 years ago. (See Miryam Bar-Matthews et al., “Late Quaternary Paleoclimate in the Eastern Mediterranean Region from Stable Isotope Analysis of Speleothems at Soreq Cave, Israel,” Quaternary Research, vol. 47, no. 2 [1997]: 155–68, https://doi.org/10.1006/qres.1997.1883.) In Palestine, we see Early Bronze IV (2250–2000 BC) sites abandoned. At Tell Leilan in Syria, archaeologists found a 1-meter-thick sterile layer of silts corresponding to post–Old Kingdom times, much like what seems to appear in a core sample from Tell Tebilla. (See H. Weiss et al., “The Genesis and Collapse of Third Millennium North Mesopotamian Civilization,” Science, vol. 261, no. 5124 [1993]: 995–1004, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.261.5124.995; Larry A. Pavlish, “Archaeometry at Mendes: 1990–2002,” Egypt, Israel and the Ancient Mediterranean World: Studies in Honor of Donald B. Redford, ed. Gary N. Knoppers and Antoine Hirsch, Problem der Ägyptologie series, vol. 20 [Leiden: Brill, 2004], 61–112.) In Syria and Iraq, there is evidence for the disappearance of the Akkadian Empire around 2170 BC, or 4,170 +/-150 years before present. At Lake Van, located between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea in Turkey, archaeologists have collected an annual record of silt and clay deposits covering the past 20,000 years. Such layers, called varves, typically reveal the deposition cycles associated with still bodies of water. Here they show that the airborne dust rose five times between 2290 and 2000 BC. Also, lake levels and oak pollens decreased, while wind-borne quartz deposition increased—something that occurs during times of aridity. (See Gerry Lemcke and Michael Sturm, “δ18o and Trace Element Measurements as Proxy for the Reconstruction of Climate Changes at Lake Van [Turkey]: Preliminary Results,” Third Millennium B.C. Climate Change and Old World Collapse, NATO ASI Series I, Global Environmental Change, vol. 49, ed. H. Nüzhet Dalfes et al. [Berlin: Springer, 1997], 653–78.) Looking eastward, a study from India that analyzed core samples of sediments from the Indus River delta found major changes in the oxygen isotope ratios of plankton around 4,200 years ago, suggesting decreased monsoon rainfalls. (See M. Staubwasser et al., “Climate Change at the 4.2 ka BP Termination of the Indus Valley Civilization and Holocene South Asian Monsoon Variability,” Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 30, no. 8 [2003]: 1425, https://doi.org/10.1029/2002GL016822.)