Egypt

Hiding in plain view - identifying sites from satellite photos

POPSCI.com

A slideshow demonstrating how Sarah Parcak goes about finding ancient Egyptian sites using satellite photographs.

I should warn you that the site was down over the weekend, and when it first came back up I was only able to access the first couple of slides - but it seems to be working normally at the moment. Well worth a look if you're interested in how sites are found.

Lots of people live in Egypt. They always have. So how do you find ancient ruins when modern humans live and farm the land? Sarah Parcak of the University of Alabama at Birmingham uses images from a hyperspectral satellite, which has cameras that take pictures in various wavelengths. She sorts the data to reveal the high concentrations of organic matter and phosphorus content that mark ancient Egyptian house mounds. Then she gets a closer look and starts to dig.

- A Digital Eye Of Horus For Archaeologists
Talking Pyramids (Vincent Brown) Following the latest report about Sarah Parcak's work iwth satellites Vincent has provided a good summary of many other wasy in which archaeologists have been using satellite technology. As technology evolves at an...

- Satellites Unearthing Ancient Egyptian Ruins
CNN Sarah Parcak's work with satellite images makes fairly regular appearences in the media. There's nothing really new here, but for those of you who haven't come across her work before the above article provides a good summary. Archaeologists...

- Satellites Reveal Ancient Sites
The Birmingham News In a computer lab on Birmingham's Southside, UAB anthropology professor Sarah Parcak scours satellite images for hidden Egyptian archaeological sites half a world away. With the help of the new technology, Parcak and collaborators...

- New Sites In Egypt Spotted From Space
http://www.livescience.com/history/070605_satellite_egypt2.html More on Sarah Parcak's work with satellite images of Egypt: "Satellites hovering above Egypt have zoomed in on a 1,600-year-old metropolis, archaeologists say. Images captured from space...

- Feature On Sarah Parcak
http://www.bangornews.com/news/templates/?a=131567An piece about Sarah Parcak's work using modern technologies to locate new sites, particuarly in the Delta: "Her discovery of 100 new sites in Egypt, some dating as far back as 3000 B.C., certainly...

Egypt