(Image credit: University of Alabama at Birmingham) Sarah Parcak, an Egyptologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, has led a satellite imaging study to find buried pyramids, tombs and settlements in Egypt. "Now, before that, I go to Google Earth." "In the old days, I'd jump into the Land Rover and go look at a possible site," said Tony Pollard, director of the Centre for Battlefield Archaeology at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. When it rains, soils with mud brick hold moisture longer and appear discolored in satellite photos. Many of the old Egyptian sites have buried mud brick architecture that crumbles over time and mixes with the sand or silt above them. "Obviously, we're not zooming in with satellite imaging to find the Ark of the Covenant and the Well of Lost Souls," Parcak said.Įven ordinary satellite images used by Google Earth have helped. The images also revealed buried city streets and houses at the ancient Egyptian city of Tanis, a well-known archaeological site that was featured in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" three decades ago. They found 17 undiscovered pyramids and more than 1,000 tombs. Sarah Parcak, an Egyptologist at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, and an international team recently used infrared satellite imaging to peer as far down as 33 feet (10 meters) below the Egyptian desert. One of the current revolutions in archaeology relies upon satellites floating in orbit above the Earth.
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