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Archaeologist 'digs' using drone for fieldwork in Armenia

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  • Archaeologist 'digs' using drone for fieldwork in Armenia

    Imperial Valley News
    Sept 2 2014


    Archaeologist 'digs' using drone for fieldwork in Armenia

    Created on Tuesday, 02 September 2014 17:01
    Written by Amy Patterson Neubert


    West Lafayette, Indiana - A Purdue University archaeologist is
    utilizing drone technology to capture details and data from Bronze Age
    field sites in Armenia.

    "Drones are a new tool in archaeologists' toolkits," said Ian Lindsay,
    an associate professor of anthropology who has been excavating in the
    South Caucasus region for 15 years. "It's a good alternative to kites,
    balloons or sitting in the bucket of a crane with a camera trying to
    visually document these ancient sites. Drones offer a detailed aerial
    perspective that we've never had before, and by leveraging this
    technology archaeologists can be more efficient in the field as drones
    give us an immediate sense of spatial science scale useful for
    planning excavation."

    Lindsay's 3:49 minute video of various field Armenian sites from this
    summer is available online. The drone, flying 300 meters from the
    ground, navigated the valleys and mountains of the Tsaghkahovit Plain
    and Mt. Aragats region to provide a view that is better quality and
    less expensive than images captured by satellite or mapping imagery.
    Lindsay is co-director of Project ArAGATS, Archaeology and Geography
    of Ancient Transcaucasian Societies, that focuses on the exploration
    of southern Caucasia's rich past and the preservation of modern
    Armenia's diverse cultural heritage.

    Funds from Purdue's College of Liberal Arts and Office of Executive
    Vice President for Research and Partnerships supported the new drone
    technology. Lindsay also is collaborating with Adam T. Smith, Cornell
    University professor and co-director of the Project ArAGATS, and the
    Aragats Foundation, which encourages and supports archaeological
    tourism, education and development in Armenia.

    In addition to the spatial analysis of the hilly region, Lindsay also
    was able to use the drone images to count burials from the late Late
    Bronze Age, dating to 1500 BCE, a time period contemporary to King Tut
    in Egypt.

    The societies of the South Caucasia society were mobile - pastoralists
    who cared for livestock - so they didn't leave a strong footprint
    other than cemeteries and fortresses which may have housed their
    leaders. These fortresses were built with extremely large stone
    boulders and on ridges overlooking plains and valleys. Because only
    the lower courses of the foundation walls are preserved, researchers
    do not know the height of the structures. Ancient remains and
    artifacts, including a shrine enclosed within a stone room of a
    fortress, can be found up to 2 meters underground, but there are some
    visible surface features.

    "I'm interested in how mobile pastoralists coalesce into larger
    political structures," Lindsay said. "This group was mobile, so what
    brought them back to these fortresses to pay their tithing and support
    the local political structure? Artifacts show these places were homes
    to ritual, and ritual is an important form of soft power that may have
    encouraged people to return seasonally to support the fortresses'
    institutions and leaders."

    Lindsay also is interested in the development of metal production in
    the area, as well as trade and communication routes through the hilly
    region.

    In addition to utilizing the drone technology this summer, Lindsay was
    able to test a new iPad-based mobile GIS (geographic information
    system) data collection system and mobile data collection app that he
    and Nicole Kong, an assistant professor of library science who
    specializes in GIS, developed to inventory new sites.

    "This will be a collaborative tool for archaeologists in the region to
    add and edit data about field sites," Lindsay said. "It also will be
    helpful to update legacy sites, which are sites that were identified
    or excavated but have not yet been published. Again, it's another tool
    to help scientists be more efficient in the field."

    Funds from the College of Liberal Arts and the Executive Vice
    President for Research and Partnerships also supported the GIS data
    collection system.


    http://imperialvalleynews.com/index.php/news/world/10809-archaeologist-digs-using-drone-for-fieldwork-in-armenia.html

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