Amy Patterson Neubert
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."
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.
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An aerial view of excavations of the West Settlement at the base of
the Tsaghkahovit Fortress in Armenia. (Photo provided by Project
ArAGATS) |
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.
www.purdue.edu, September 2, 2014
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