Google Earth, software that uses high resolution satellite images of the entire planet to allow the user to get an incredible moving aerial view of our world, has stimulated some serious applications in archaeology--and seriously good fun for fans of archaeology.
One of the reasons I love flying in airplanes is the view you get from the window. Soaring over vast tracks of land and getting a glimpse of large archaeological sites (if you know what to look for, and the weather is right, and you're on the right side of the plane), is one of the great modern pleasures of the world today. Sadly, security issues and rising costs have sucked most of the fun out of airline trips these days. And, let's face it, even when all the climatological forces are right, there just aren't any labels on the ground to tell you what you're looking at anyway.
Google Earth Placemarks and Archaeology
But, using
Google Earth and capitalizing on the talent and time of people like
JQ Jacobs, you can see high resolution satellite photographs of the world, and easily find and investigate archaeological wonders like Machu Picchu, slowly floating down the mountains or racing through the narrow valley of the Inca trail like a Jedi knight, all without leaving your computer.
Essentially, Google Earth (or just GE) is an extremely detailed, high resolution map of the world. Its users add labels called placemarkers to the map, indicating cities and restaurants and sports arenas and geocaching sites, all using a fairly sophisticated Geographic Information System client. After they've created the placemarkers, the users post a link to them on one of the bulletin boards at Google Earth. But don't let the GIS connection scare you off! After installation and a little fussing with the interface, you too can zoom along the narrow steep-sided Inca trail in Peru or poke around the landscape at Stonehenge or take a visual tour of castles in Europe. Or if you've got the time to study up, you too can add placemarkers of your own.
JQ Jacobs has long been a contributor of quality content about archaeology on the Internet. With a wink, he warns would-be users, "I'm glimpsing a possible forthcoming chronic disorder, 'Google Earth Addiction'." In February of 2006, Jacobs began posting placemark files on his website, marking several archaeological sites with a concentration on Hopewellian earthworks of the American northeast. Another user on Google Earth is simply known as H21, who has assembled placemarkers for castles in France, and Roman and Greek amphitheatres. Some of the site placemarkers on Google Earth are simple location points, but others have lots of information attached--so be careful, like anywhere else on the Internet, there be dragons, er, inaccuracies.
Survey Techniques and Google Earth
On a more serious but downright exciting note, GE has also been used successfully to survey for archaeological sites. Searching for crop marks on aerial photos is a time-tested way to identify possible archaeological sites, so it seems reasonable that high resolution satellite imagery would be a fruitful source of identification. Sure enough, researcher Scott Madry, who is leading one of the oldest large-scale remote sensing projects on the planet called
GIS and Remote Sensing for Archaeology: Burgundy, France, has had great success identifying archaeological sites using Google Earth. Sitting in his office at Chapel Hill, Madry used Google Earth to identify over 100 possible sites in France; fully 25% of those were previously unrecorded.
Find the Archaeology Game
Find the Archaeology is a game on the Google Earth community bulletin board where people post an aerial photograph of an archaeological site and players must figure out where in the world it is or what in the world it is. The answer--if it's been discovered--will be in postings at the bottom of the page; sometimes printed in white lettering so if you see the words "in white" click and drag your mouse over the area. There simply isn't yet a very good structure to the bulletin board, so I've collected several of the game entries in
Find the Archaeology. Sign in to Google Earth to play; you don't need to have Google Earth installed to guess.
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