Illus. with full-color photos. Take a close-up look at the science and technology of digging up the past--from the 1970 excavation of the legendary city of Troy to the recent find of a Chinese emperor's long-lost grave.
Winner of Archaeological Institute of America's Felicia A. Holton Book Award • Winner of the Phi Beta Kappa Prize for Science • An Amazon Best Science Book of 2019 • A Science Friday Best Science Book of 2019 • A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2019 • A Science News Best Book of 2019 • Nature's Top Ten Books of 2019 "A crash course in the amazing new science of space archaeology that only Sarah Parcak can give. This book will awaken the explorer in all of us." ?Chris Anderson, Head of TED National Geographic Explorer and TED Prize-winner Dr. Sarah Parcak gives readers a personal tour of the evolution, major discoveries, and future potential of the young field of satellite archaeology. From surprise advancements after the declassification of spy photography, to a new map of the mythical Egyptian city of Tanis, she shares her field’s biggest discoveries, revealing why space archaeology is not only exciting, but urgently essential to the preservation of the world’s ancient treasures. Parcak has worked in twelve countries and four continents, using multispectral and high-resolution satellite imagery to identify thousands of previously unknown settlements, roads, fortresses, palaces, tombs, and even potential pyramids. From there, her stories take us back in time and across borders, into the day-to-day lives of ancient humans whose traits and genes we share. And she shows us that if we heed the lessons of the past, we can shape a vibrant future. Includes Illustrations
In this book David Veart walks alongside New Zealand archaeologists as they dig up the past on top of volcanoes and beneath city streets, in Maori pa and explorers huts.
This volume addresses the entanglement between archaeology, imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, and war. Popular sentiment in the West has tended to embrace the adventure rather than ponder the legacy of archaeological explorers; allegations by imperial powers of "discovering" archaeological sites or "saving" world heritage from neglect or destruction have often provided the pretext for expanding political influence. Consequently, citizens have often fallen victim to the imperial war machine, seeing their lands confiscated, their artifacts looted, and the ancient remains in their midst commercialized. Spanning the globe with case studies from East Asia, Siberia, Australia, North and South America, Europe, and Africa, sixteen contributions written by archaeologists, art historians, and historians from four continents offer unusual breadth and depth in the assessment of various claims to patrimonial heritage, contextualized by the imperial and colonial ventures of the last two centuries and their postcolonial legacy.
This activity book features 25 projects such as making a surface survey of a site, building a screen for sifting dirt and debris at a dig, tracking soil age by color, and counting tree rings to date a find, teaches kids the techniques that unearthed Neanderthal caves, Tutankhamun’s tomb, the city of Pompeii, and Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec empire. Kids will delight in fashioning a stone-age tool, playing a seriation game with old photographs of cars, “reading” objects excavated in their own backyards, and using patent numbers to date modern artifacts as they gain an overview of human history and the science that brings it back to life.
Readers can delve into the awesome world of archaeology to discover sinister tombs, sunken wrecks and hidden caves. This dead interesting guide has bucketfuls of archaeological facts and hilarious cartoons!
Deepwater archaeology uncovers secrets from the ancient maritime past . . . Thousands of shipwrecks and archaeological sites lie undiscovered in deep water, potentially holding important clues to our maritime past. Scientists have explored only a small percentage of the oceans' depths, as 98 percent of the seabed lies well beyond the reach of conventional diving. Ships from the Depths surveys the dramatic advances in technology over the last few years that have made it possible for scientists to locate, study, and catalogue archaeological sites in waters previously inaccessible to humans. Researcher and explorer Fredrik Søreide presents the development of deepwater archaeology since 1971, when Willard Bascom designed his Alcoa Seaprobe to locate and raise deepwater wrecks in the Mediterranean. Accompanied by descriptions and color photographs of deepwater projects and equipment, this book considers not only techniques that have been developed for location and observation of sites but also removal and excavation methods distinctive to these unique locations, far beyond the reach of scuba gear. Søreide provides an introduction to and survey of the history, development, and potential of this exciting branch of nautical archaeology. Scholars and field archaeologists will appreciate this handy compendium of the current state of the discipline and technology, and general readers will relish this comprehensive look at the challenges and opportunities associated with locating and studying historical and ancient shipwrecks in some of the world’s deepest waters.