....But space archaeology might not have taken off without Tom Sever. In the late 1970s, while working on a project for an environmental non-profit, Sever went to Peru to retrace paths followed by 16th century Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro. It took three months for Sever and a colleague to walk one-and-a-half of Pizarro’s 41 lines. He remembers thinking: “There has to be a better way to do this.”
He read an article about imaging work being done at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, and he decided to apply to the program. “Traditional archaeology wasn’t going to work for me to answer the questions I had,” he said. In 1981, he joined the small group of programmers at Stennis who were learning to interpret satellite images even as “NASA was inventing remote sensing.” Archaeologists had only just started to approach the agency for help in surveying sites.
In his first year at Stennis, Sever worked by day scouring imagery to make agricultural maps. But by night, he was chipping away at his passion project: mapping archaeological sites. Using several tools—the Thermal Infrared Multispectral Scanner (TIMS), the Calibrated Airborne Multispectral Scanner (CAMS), and the Advanced Terrestrial Land Applications Sensor (ATLAS)—he charted Chaco Canyon, New Mexico (see the top of this page), home to the highest concentration of pueblos in the southwestern United States. Poring through images, Sever found ancient roadways that led to sacred sites—roads 30 feet wide and “straight as an arrow.” Fieldwork by ground-based teams verified the finds. “It was ten for ten.”....
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Space Archaeology: In the Realm of Resolution (nasa.gov)
Peering through the Sands of Time: Searching for the Origins of Space Archaeology (nasa.gov)
Archaeologists Bring High-Tech Space Tools to Earth
In Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, researchers found prehistoric roads using a remote sensing instrument capable of detecting small changes in heat on Earth's surface. The instrument, the airborne precursor of the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) now flying on the Terra satellite, detected more than 200 miles of a prehistoric roadway system, as well as ancient buildings and fields.
Four prehistoric roads converge in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico
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NASA - Archaeologists Bring High-Tech Space Tools to Earth
A history of NASA remote sensing contributions to archaeology
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A history of NASA remote sensing contributions to archaeology - ScienceDirect
Space archaeology takes aim at Earth
A relatively new realm of archaeology uses technology to take the discipline out of the dirt and into the skies.
In 2009, Chris Fisher was in Michoacán, Mexico, studying the ancient Purépecha empire, when his team found remnants of a settlement. He set out to find the edge of it, only to discover that what they thought was a small village was actually a city with an area of 10 square miles. Fisher realized that it would take the rest of his career just to survey the site.
At least, it would have in the old days. But the timing was good for Fisher, an archaeologist at Colorado State University and a National Geographic Explorer. When he got back to Colorado, he learned about a new technology called lidar (light detection and ranging), a remote-sensing tool. Lidar aims laser pulses at the surface of Earth from airplanes or satellites, creating a high-resolution, 3D grid of points that represents the Earth’s surface. Scientists can then use computers to filter out trees and vegetation to see the ground below.
The technology made quick work of surveying the Purépecha city. In 45 minutes of scanning, lidar was able to gather data that would have taken decades using traditional methods. The resulting 3D plot points detailed houses, roads and pyramids. Fisher, it turned out, still had a lot of career left.
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Space archaeology takes aim at Earth | Astronomy.com
Space archaeology
Wikipedia
Space archaeology - Wikipedia
The International Space Station Archaeological Project (ISSAP) is the first large-scale space archaeology project.
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BOLDLY GOING WHERE NO ARCHAEOLOGISTS HAVE GONE BEFORE - ISS Archaeology
