New sites and features appear where you hadn’t previously thought to look, or, in cases like Giza, have the potential to overturn long-held assumptions about major sites and time periods. The main thing I have learned is to expect the unexpected. Who knows if I’ll find anything previously undiscovered there. And wow, do we have a lot of work to do.Īs I write this, I am downloading brand-new satellite imagery of Giza, in Egypt, the site of the last standing wonder of the ancient world. We still have to survey sites on the ground, a process known as ground-truthing, and then undertake years of excavation to get a better understanding of what is there. Knowing the location of an ancient site is only the first step. In case you want to be an archaeologist and are worried that we space archaeologists will find everything first, fear not.
With advances in computing and artificial intelligence, we are on the verge of achieving those same results in a few hours. We’ve gone from mapping a few dozen ancient sites in one summer-long archaeological season to mapping hundreds, if not thousands, of sites in weeks. What we can find with new technologies such as satellite imagery is simply astounding. Armed with new data sets, we can spin fresh tales that bring us closer to getting more right than wrong about our ancestors and ourselves.
The human story-the story of us-is evolving at breakneck speed thanks to new technologies.
0 kommentar(er)
