Space Archaeology

Sarah Parcak Is a Space Archaeologist. Soon You Will Be Too. (+Slideshow)

Liz Stinson | February 16, 2016

[...] Space archaeologists don’t actually work in space. Instead, they use satellite imagery, taken by spacecraft whizzing 400 miles above Earth’s surface, to find things buried within the planet’s crust. Parcak is among a small but growing number of researchers using this technology to find potential excavation sites. The field has been around since the early 1980s, when NASA hired its first archaeologist, Tom Sever, to exploit new satellite technology. But in the last decade, higher-resolution imagery has triggered a boom in archaeological discoveries. According to TED, Parcak has helped find 17 potential pyramids, upwards of 3,000 settlements, and 1,000 lost tombs—and that’s just in Egypt. She has, in her own words, “beat Indy.” [...]

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p037v3xd

Source: http://www.wired.com/2016/02/sarah-parcak/

<more at http://www.wired.com/2016/02/sarah-parcak/; related links: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p037v3xd (+Video) (What's a space archaeologist? November 12, 2015) and http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-28/isis-has-new-cash-cow-art-loot-it-s-peddling-on-ebay-facebook (Islamic State Is Selling Looted Art Online for Needed Cash. June 28, 2015)>