Archaeology from Space
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A Science Friday Best Science Book of 2019 • A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2019 • Nature's Top Ten Books of 2019 • A Science News Best Book of 2019 "A crash course in the amazing new science of space archaeology that only Sarah Parcak can give. This book will awaken the explorer in all of us." —Chris Anderson, Head of TED National Geographic Fellow and TED Prize–winner Sarah Parcak pioneers the young field of satellite archaeology, using futuristic tools to unlock secrets from the past and transform how discoveries are made. As an archaeologist, she has worked on remote sensing projects across twelve countries and four continents, using multispectral and high-resolution satellite imagery analysis to identify thousands of potential archaeological sites. These include previously unknown settlements, roads, fortresses, palaces, tombs, and even potential pyramids. She presently directs major crowdsourcing efforts to map ancient civilizations across Peru and India. In Archaeology from Space, Sarah describes the field’s evolution, major discoveries, and future potential. From surprise advancements after the declassification of spy photography, to a new map of the mythical Egyptian city of Tanis, she shares her field’s biggest discoveries, revealing why space archaeology is not only exciting but also essential to the preservation of the world’s ancient treasures for future generations. Sarah’s stories take readers back in time and across borders, into the day-to-day lives of ancient humans who displayed grit, ingenuity, and brilliance across the millennia. We share those same traits, and those same underlying genes. If we heed the lessons of the past, we can shape a vibrant future.
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I wish the author would have stuck to the title. While written ina relentlessly breezy style, it's great when she talks about archaeology, not so much when she talks about her husband, her son and several woke chapters about women and gays in archaeology. She's a person of science; why should she care if the discoverer of science is gay, straight, female, male, etc?
I'm also flabbergasted that a book devoted to the cutting edge of archaeology has almost no mention of Israel. She skips through it on her round the world tour, devoting many paragraphs to say, Afghanistan, but nothing about a place, like Egypt, where they have been digging for more than a century. And she calls wine that would have come from Israel or Judea in 1000 CE “Palestinian” wine. Palestine would not exist for more than a thousand years later.
Also, why does she use the outdated “AD” and “BC” instead of the modern scholarly “CE” and “BCE”? In any case, “AD” properly goes before a date, not after it.
Remote sensing techniques are revolutionizing the field of archeology, by enabling the discovery and basic analysis of sites before any dig has to happen. Satellite imagery, LiDAR scans and ground-penetrating radar give scientists a basic idea on the materiality and structure of what lies beneath. All of that was super exciting, and I would have preferred to get more technical details. But then the majority of the book turned out to be about the more standard field of archeology. The excavations, the discoveries, the complications due to wars, the looters and the collectors willing to pay anyone - also interesting, but not exactly what the cover promised.
I liked when the author talked about a fundamental shift in archeology - how before, what was most exciting was finding tombs with treasures and golden masks, whereas now the focus of archeologists has shifted towards discovering relics that tell us about people's everyday lives back in the day.
