Read More Articles

Looking Down On Archaeology

Aerial archaeology is a term that means gathering data at a distance through remote sensing and photogrammetry. Aerial archaeology has a long history dating back to the earliest years of aviation. Earlier in this century Leonard Wooley located Egyptian tombs from the top of a hill. Archaeologist Earl Morris would climb telegraph poles beside his excavations to get aerial photographs of the site. Such low-tech approaches to aerial archaeology have achieved spectacular results over the years. Besides climbing telegraph poles and hills people have used hot air balloons, camera-equipped kites, and model airplanes to get an overhead view.

Human work leaves traces that may not be noticeable at ground level. From a plane, it is easier to distinguish traces of lines, circles, or squares and to see clearer or darker areas of land. Aerial archaeology has become a valuable archaeological tool, thanks to advances in airplane and camera technology with real time photogrammetry. It's a simple concept of perspective. Like pointillism a distant view provides the big picture that you would not see if you stood directly in front of the painting.

Aerial archaeology is so effective and proves the paradox that there are things that can be seen in a distant view that cannot be seen up close. An archaeologist standing on the ground is in much the same situation. There may be patterns on the ground around him that they cannot see because they are too large. They are looking at them horizontally.

In this photo we see a person standing in the midst of randomly scattered stones or at best a few places where they seem to be lined in rows. There is actually a large pattern of stone alignments all around that person, but it is not apparent to her because of its size.

In this aerial view of the same location the true arrangement of the stones is revealed. With an aerial perspective, it is obvious that these stones were aligned in a large grid the overall arrangement is visible.

The archaeologist has the opposite problem from an astronomer. An astronomer wants to study things that are too distant for good viewing, so he must bring them closer and make them optically larger using a telescope. Some things archaeologists want to study are too close for good viewing and they trade this horizontal view for a vertical one. In summary, aerial photography providess a distant view of the ground to gain a larger perspective and reveal things that are often undetectable at ground level.