Sarah Parcak: 'Imagine being able to zoom in from space to see a pottery shard!'
Zoë Corbyn
The Observer
Archaeology
The space archaeologist on her GlobalXplorer project, deterring looters and what ancient Egypt reveals about our future
Sat 27 Jul 2019 10.00 EDT
American space archaeologist Sarah Parcak uses satellites orbiting high above the Earth to find clues about what is concealed beneath our feet. Her work has been the focus of BBC documentaries on Egypt, ancient Rome and the Vikings. In 2016 she won the $1m TED prize to build a website where anyone can help make discoveries using space archaeology. Now the professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham has a new book: Archaeology from Space: How the Future Shapes Our Past.
What is space archaeology?
It is archaeology using satellites, high-flying aircraft or any other platform that allows you to take pictures remotely of the Earth’s surface. You’re looking back on Earth to find subtle hints of ancient features buried under the ground. Sometimes things show up visually, but more often we are looking in different parts of the light spectrum that we can’t see. For example, the near infrared shows small differences in vegetation and you might expect the vegetation growing on top of buried stone to be a little less healthy. Many thousands of new Mayan sites were found recently in the Guatemalan jungle using Lidar imaging. It is a laser system, flown from an aeroplane, that bounces pulsed laser light off the ground, revealing features which would normally be hidden below the vegetation.
Do most archaeologists use space archaeology?
The field was born in the early 1980s but only took off about 15 years ago when satellites started being much more widely used. It’s become part of archaeology’s common toolkit and the number of trained archaeologists that do this kind of work is increasing.
What got you into the field?
I completed my degree at Yale in 2001 in archaeology and Egyptology – the early Indiana Jones movies helped fuel my interest. I took my first remote-sensing class while there, inspired by my grandfather. He had pioneered the use of aerial photography in forestry to map and measure tree heights, having learned about the technique as an officer in world war two. I took the class betting loads of archaeologists would use it. I found out just how new the field was.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jul/27/sarah-parcak-interview-arcaeology-from-space-satellite-imaging-globalxplorer-project-ancient-egypt
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