Less than 1 percent of ancient Egypt has been discovered and excavated. With population pressures, urbanization, and modernization encroaching, we're in a race against time. Why not use the most advanced tools we have to map, quantify, and protect our past?
Sarah Parcak
A picture is worth a thousand words. A satellite image is worth a million dollars.
Archaeology holds all the keys to understanding who we are and where we come from.
Scientists use satellites to track weather, map ice sheet melting, detect diseases, show ecosystem change... the list goes on and on. I think nearly every scientific field benefits or could benefit from satellite imagery analysis.
In archaeology, context is everything. Objects allow us to reconstruct the past. Taking artifacts from a temple or an ancient private house is like emptying out a time capsule.
Imagery is powerful. Imagery is provocative - satellite imagery much more so because it is from space, and it allows us to get this perspective that we don't have to have otherwise.
I give my grandfather, Dr Harold Young, a forestry Professor at the University of Maine, full credit for my career path. He pioneered the use of aerial photography in forestry in the 1950s, and we think he worked as a spy for the CIA during the Cold War, mapping Russian installations.
Satellite imagery is the only way we can map the looting patterns effectively.
It's absolutely critical, you know, to train young men and women not just to find sites, but also to protect sites, especially in the wake of the Arab Spring. There's been significant site-looting in Egypt and elsewhere across the Middle East.
When you think about the scale of human populations all over the world and the fact that there's so much here, really, the only way to be able to visualize that is to pull back in space... It allows us to see hidden temples and tombs and pyramids and even entire settlements.
I am part of a network of people monitoring what's happening at ancient sites in Iraq and Syria - from space. We can see clearly the destruction.
If you look at the Nile on a map of Egypt, you don't think it has moved very much, but the river is very violent and has moved over time.
I dig in the sand, and I play with pretty pictures, so I never really left kindergarten.
Archaeologists use datasets from NASA and commercial satellites, processing the information using various off-the-shelf computer programs. These datasets allow us to see beyond the visible part of the light spectrum into the near, middle, and far infrared.
We emphasise the features on satellite maps by adding colours to farmland, urban structures, archaeological sites, vegetation and water.
We're literally just beginning to learn how to use satellites to find sites. More and more people are realizing there's this incredible tool.
When a wall is slowly covered over by earth, the materials it's made from decay and become part of the soils around and above it, sometimes causing vegetation above and next to the wall to grow faster or slower. Satellite imagery helps archaeologists to pick up these subtle changes.
I hope my work contributes to understanding long-term patterns of human behavior and how we survive, thrive, or fail during times of environmental, social, and economic crisis.
I keep being surprised by the amount of archaeological sites and features that are left to find all over the world.
Satellites record data in different parts of the light spectrum that we can't see. And it's that information that allows satellites to be so powerful in terms of looking at things like vegetation health, finding different kinds of geology that may indicate an oil deposit or some kind of mineralogical deposit that can be mined.
I try to tell a lot of stories to make my students aware that the world is a very cool place with many problems that need solving, and that they all can help solve them.
What if Hiram Bingham had the technology to find hundreds of other archaeological sites at the same time and create entire 3-D maps of the ancient landscape accurate to within a few inches?
Itjtawy was ancient Egypt's capital for over four hundred years, at a period of time called the Middle Kingdom about four thousand years ago. The site is located in the Faiyum of Egypt, and the site is really important because in the Middle Kingdom there was this great renaissance for ancient Egyptian art, architecture and religion.
I am honored to receive the TED Prize, but it's not about me; it's about our field - and the thousands of men and women around the world, particularly in the Middle East, who are defending and protecting sites.
Satellite datasets like WorldView can see objects as small as 1.5 feet in diameter. In 2014, WorldView-3 will be able to see objects a small as a foot.
'Satellite archaeology' refers to the use of NASA and commercial high resolution satellite datasets to map and discover past structures, cities, and geological features.
If you really want to be a good archaeologist, you have to understand ancient DNA; you have to understand chemical analysis to figure out the composition of ancient pots. You have to be able to study human remains. You need to be able to do computer processing and, in some cases, computer programming.
Discoveries aren't made by one person exploring by themselves. And discoveries aren't made overnight. People don't see the thousands of hours that go into it.
When you think about archaeology, archaeology is the only field that allows us to tell the story of 99 percent of our history prior to 3,000 B.C. and writing.
Scorpions like holes. We had to put our arms in the holes to dig out the smelting residues. We always performed critter checks before an excavation, but one morning, I put an arm in and felt a sharp pierce. When I brought my hand out, it was red and already swelling.
When I was a child growing up in Maine, one of my favorite things to do was to look for sand dollars on the seashores of Maine, because my parents told me it would bring me luck. But you know, these shells, they're hard to find. They're covered in sand. They're difficult to see.
The most exciting part of what I do is understanding the scale of what we don't know. There are just countless archaeological sites all over the world, and one of the most important and best ways of finding them is using digital technology.
The looters are using Google Earth, too. They're coming in with metal detectors and geophysical equipment. Some ask me to confirm sites.
Looting and site destruction are global problems. We have a tough road ahead, and one key will be developing more collaborations and using new technologies like satellite imagery.
WorldView-3 goes into the mid-infrared wavelength, allowing you to see very subtle geological differences on the sites at a 0.4-metre resolution.
When people initially think of the term 'space archaeologist,' they think, 'Oh, it's someone who uses satellites to look for alien settlements on Mars or in outer space,' but the opposite is true - we're actually looking for evidence of past human life on planet earth.
With population pressures, urbanization, and modernization encroaching, we're in a race against time. Why not use the most advanced tools we have to map, quantify, and protect our past?
The most exciting moment as an archaeologist happened when I was looking at the great archaeology site of Tannis, which of course we all know from 'Indiana Jones.' We got satellite imagery of the city of Tannis, we processed it, and literally from thousands of miles away from my lab in Alabama, we were able to map the entire city.
We only have a limited amount of time left before many archaeological sites all over the world are destroyed. So we have to be really selective about where we dig.
Getting permission to use a drone in Egypt was problematical.
That's what I want to do, ultimately: figure out a way to get the world engaged with discovery and protecting these ancient sites.
The majority of the research I do is archaeological research, but to me, as a professor, the most important thing is to encourage and mentor students.
Seeing sites and features in places where we never looked or never thought things might exist is causing archaeologists across the world to think deeper about their sites or entire cultures.
I'm an Egyptologist. I'm a remote sensing specialist, and I'm a space archaeologist.
The only technology that can 'see' beneath the ground is radar imagery. But satellite imagery also allows scientists to map short- and long-term changes to the Earth's surface. Buried archaeological remains affect the overlying vegetation, soils and even water in different ways, depending on the landscapes you're examining.
What satellites help to show us is we've actually only found a fraction of a percent of ancient settlements and sites all over the world... It's the most exciting time in history to be an archaeologist.
What these satellites do is they record light radiation that's reflected off the surface of the Earth in different parts of the light spectrum. We use false color imaging to try to tease out these very subtle differences on the ground.
There's even an aircraft sensor system that sends down hundreds of thousands of pulses of light measured at different return rates. It allows you to literally strip away vegetation and see entire cities beneath the rain forest canopy. This is the unbelievable future of archaeology.
The map we made of the 3,000-year-old city of Tanis requires no imagination. It has buildings, streets, admin complexes, houses - clear as day.
Once archaeologists have shown possible 'new' ancient features, they can import the data into their iPads and take it to the field to do survey or excavation work. Technology doesn't mean we aren't digging in the dirt anymore - it's just that we know better where to dig.
