Hello everyone and welcome back to Seeker+!
I’m your host, Julian Huguet.
And let’s just get into it.
In the first two episodes of this series about archaeology, we talked about how archaeologists
approach uncovering ancient artifacts and dating them through radioactivity measurements
and relative information.
Then we got into some really cool examples of recent archaeological discoveries and touched
on the question of whether we should be digging up humans from the past in the first place.
Honestly there wasn’t a straight forward, one-size-fits-all answer there, so I’d definitely
check that out if you haven’t already.
And that ties into what we’re going to talk about in this episode.
Could technology enable us to be less invasive in our approach to archaeology?
The short answer is yes.
And it’s already helping with this.
The long answer is yes plus lots of lasers!
I know.
You were probably wondering when we’d get to the lasers!
It’s all I ever really want to talk about tbh.
Archaeology professor Sarah Parcak paints an incredible picture of how futuristic tech
could revolutionize the entire field of archaeology in the next hundred years.
I’ll link to her full article in the show notes because there’s so much more.
But the gist is this.
Picture a dirt mound, maybe 500 square meters.
We think there might be something incredible inside but we don’t know what.
Instead of digging carefully into the mound with shovels and brushes for say, 40 years,
a fleet of drones is deployed.
The drones are equipped with thermal infrared, hyperspectral sensing systems and LiDAR.
More on LiDAR later, but basically these drones have the systems to shoot lasers and detect
architecture below the surface of the ground with incredible accuracy.
Oh and this only takes a few minutes to do.
Then these 3D images could be analyzed by a technician to understand not only what the
structure looks like underground, but also show in different colors how construction
may have occurred in different phases.
Computer models can get even more information by comparing —these images to a database
of similar ones.
Remember, no digging at all has occurred.
From there, Parcak elaborates, if you wanted even more information you could deploy another
set of drones this time with lasers that can drill tiny holes and shoot super tiny ultrasound
probes into the mound.
The ultrasound could help you build a model of structures from the inside including the
artifacts, coffins, or other materials.
AND THEN you send tiny robots down to collect DNA from bones or little material samples
from.
Maybe you even 3D print the artifacts that were scanned so that they can be put in museums
or brought to schools.
Or put in replica buildings.
They could even be printed in the same materials like lapis lazuli!
Whew wow ok, I got a little fired up there.
But the implications of this are incredible.
Think of just how much we could investigate without needing to clear intrusive permits
for digging or risk damaging samples by exposing them to the elements.
And there are so many scenarios where this would be helpful.
One that pops to mind are cities like Rome, where civilizations were built on top of one
another for 10,000 years.
It’s quite a bit easier to dig out an abandoned pyramid in the middle of the desert compared
to a buried temple in the middle of one of the busiest metropolitan cities in the world.
In places like Rome, there’s often a conflict between preservation of historic sites and
like, building a better subway.
So scans could help city planners decide where to dig for new construction projects.
So while tiny excavation robots are the stuff of the future, LiDAR is very much a tool that
is enabling these non intrusive discoveries today.
LiDAR is a remote sensing method that uses light in the form of a pulsed laser to measure
ranges or distances to the Earth.
It’s usually deployed from the air by a plane or sometimes from a handheld device.
Lasers shine from the device over the areas that an archaeologist wants to map.
These lasers are essentially brief pulses of light.
Then the instrument detects how long it takes for the light pulse to bounce back to it.
That measurement tells it how far away the object is.
Then those measurements are plotted with GPS.
And it’s crazy precise.
When that data is plugged into a computer, it can be used to 3D map the area.
So if you’re flying a helicopter over a dense jungle and using a regular film camera,
you’re just going to be able to see a top layer of trees.
But LIDAR is able to see the trees and down into the dirt.
This technology was first developed in the 1960s for the U.S. military.
Earlier we talked about how the Manhattan project led to a new dating technique for
archaeologists - it’s an interesting parallel with LiDAR in this case too.
LiDAR has also been used by NASA to map the surface of the Moon back in the 70s.
Another major field that LiDAR is being used is in self-driving cars.
It’s just much more accurate at surveying in 3D space beyond what conventional cameras
can capture.
But spotting ancient sites using LiDAR is proving to be quite successful.
Gone are the days of expeditions through swamps off of vague clues in search of gold.
Just last year, an international team of scientists published findings that used LiDar to discover
a previously unknown site in Mexico.
The site, known as Aguada Fénix, has turned out to be the oldest and largest known structure
built by the Maya people.
It’s age and size has been upsetting preconceived ideas that Maya society grew gradually, when
in reality this discovery suggests that they came out of the gate fast with massive building
projects 3,000 years ago.
So cool.
Hyperspectral imaging is another tool in play here.
This entails measuring the spectral signatures of materials.
Spectral signature is basically the chemical composition of an object.
This is the same technique that astrophysicists use to figure out what chemicals are in supernovae
out in space.
That’s why they’re sometimes called galactic archaeologists.
It works by collecting all the variations of the reflected electromagnetic radiation
from an object and then plotting them out.
When you compare this plot to the chemical signatures of different materials, voila you
know what something is made of.
Ok, you got me.
There’s a bit more to it than that…
But in short, that’s basically it.
Here’s a couple things that this could tell us within the context of archaeology.
Ceramics or metal production leaves a signature because it requires burning at super high
temperatures.
So that could tell archaeologists what kind of industry occurred in a place.
Having a lot of bones in an area like an ancient cemetery changes the chemical composition
of soil, so a burial site could be found from above ground via this spectral imaging.
Want to know whether a container you found is a lamp?
Test it for signatures of burning oil or blubber.
The creativity in using these tools is just astounding to me and it’s getting better
and better.
One super creative use of all this technology is in this project called CyArk which is a
nonprofit that is working furiously to digitally record and archive models of the world’s
most significant cultural heritage sites, particularly in current conflict zones or
regions threatened by natural disasters and climate change.
So the future of archaeology is looking pretty great in my opinion.
But before we go, I had one last thing I wanted to know.
When I think about human history and what out there has actually stood the test of time,
I think of massive stone pyramids, of Maya temples, of great Roman structures.
But what about modern humans?
How will we be remembered?
Is digitally recording everything making our civilization more permanent or easier to erase?
So I leave you with this quote from our favorite futuristic archaeology expert Sarah Parcak
on this notion.
“Nothing ever disappears forever, it seems, except socks.”
And there you have it.
This was a massive topic for me to cover, so I could honestly see coming back to it
in future iterations of Seeker+.
So if you have a question or an angle you’d love to learn more about, let me know!
And otherwise, thank you so much for spending this time with me.
I’ll see you next time.