British archaeologists used thousands of aerial photos to reveal more than 2,700 unrecorded historic features of Hadrian’s Wall in northern England.
Among the new features identified by experts from the English Heritage were medieval sheep farms, ancient burial mounds and 19th Century lead mines.
The scientists used more than 30,500 pictures taken during the past 60 years as part of an English Heritage initiative to map and interpret England’s archaeological sites.
The project began in 2002, and includes a wide area on either side of the 73 mile length of the wall from the Solway Plain in Cumbria to Newcastle in the east.
Recorded features of Hadrian’s Wall, a World Heritage Site, include a World War II anti-aircraft gun battery near Cleadon, Tyneside, an Iron Age hillfort near Fourstones, Northumberland, and the abandoned medieval village of East Matfen.
"We need to remember that Hadrian's Wall is not an isolated monument set within a landscape devoid of any other history,” said David MacLeod of English Heritage's Aerial Survey and Investigation team.
"This region saw a tremendous amount of activity before the Romans arrived and after they left, traces and memories of which remain today,” he told BBC News.
"It will help us to understand and manage the rich heritage of human activity that has shaped this landscape, whether it is the remains of a Bronze Age farm or a 20th Century gun battery."
Scientists are using advanced visualization technologies to find the hidden tomb of Genghis Khan, the founder of the Mongol empire.
According to legend, Genghis Khan lies buried somewhere beneath the dusty steppe of Northeastern Mongolia, entombed in a very secretive spot.
Once he was below ground, his men brought in horses to trample evidence of his grave, and just to be absolutely sure he would never be found, they diverted a river to flow over their leaders final resting place.
What Khan and his followers couldnt have envisioned was that nearly 800 years after his death, scientists at UC (University of California) San Diegos Center for Interdisciplinary Science in Art, Architecture and Archaeology (CISA3) would try to locate his tomb using advanced visualization technologies, whose origins can be traced back to the time of the Mongolian emperor himself.
As outrageous as it might sound, were looking for the tomb of Genghis Khan, Dr. Albert Yu-Min Lin, an affiliated researcher for CISA3, told Science News.
There are few clues and no factual evidence about Genghis Khans burial, which is why we need to start using technology to solve this mystery, he added.
Lin and several colleagues are hoping to use advanced visualization and analytical technologies available at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) to pinpoint Khans tomb and conduct a non-invasive archaeological analysis of the area where he is believed to be buried.
Lins hope for success is based on his access to unparalleled technology at Calit2 and CISA3 to pinpoint the area where Khan might have been laid to rest, find the tomb itself and then develop a virtual recreation of it using various methods of spectral and digital imaging.
According to Lin, If you have a large burial, thats going to have an impact on the landscape. To find Khans tomb, well be using remote sensing techniques and satellite imagery to take digital pictures of the ground in the surrounding region, which well be able to display on Calit2s 287-million pixel HIPerSpace display wall.
Once weve narrowed down this region in Mongolia to a certain area, well use techniques such as ground penetrating radar, electromagnetic induction and magnetometry to produce non-destructive, non-invasive surveys, said Lin.
Well then work with people in UCSDs electrical engineering department to develop visual algorithms that will allow us to create a high-resolution, 3-D representation of the site, he added.
Lin said that hes hoping to collaborate with the Mongolian government and national universities for the project. (ANI)
A new remote sensing technology has peeled away layers of mud and rock near Peru's Cahuachi desert to reveal an ancient adobe pyramid, Italian researchers announced on Friday at a satellite imagery conference in Rome.
Nicola Masini and Rosa Lasaponara of Italy's National Research Council (CNR) discovered the pyramid by analyzing images from the satellite Quickbird, which they used to penetrate the Peruvian soil.
The researchers investigated a test area along the river Nazca. Covered by plants and grass, it was about a mile away from Cahuachi's archaeological site, which contains the remains of what is believed to be the world's biggest mud city.
Via Quickbird, Masini and colleagues collected hi-resolution infrared and multispectral images. After the researchers optimized the images with special algorithms, the result was a detailed visualization of a pyramid extending over a 9,000-square-meter area.
The discovery doesn't come as a surprise to archaeologists, since some 40 mounds at Cahuachi are believed to contain the remains of important structures.
"We know that many buildings are still buried under Cahuachi's sands, but until now, it was almost impossible to exactly locate them and detect their shape from an aerial view," Masini told Discovery News. "The biggest problem was the very low contrast between adobe, which is sun-dried earth, and the background subsoil."
Cahuachi is the best-known site of the Nazca civilization, which flourished in Peru between the first century B.C. and the fifth century A.D. and slid into oblivion by the time the Inca Empire rose to dominate the Andes.
Famous for carving in the Peruvian desert hundreds of geometric lines and images of animals and birds that are best viewed from the air, the Nazca people built Cahuachi as a ceremonial center, molding pyramids, temples and plazas from the desert itself.
There, priests led ceremonies including human sacrifices, drawing people from across the region.
Between 300 and 350 A.D., two natural disasters -- a powerful flood and a devastating earthquake -- hit Cahuachi. The site lost its sacred power to the Nazca, who then abandoned the area.
But before leaving, they sealed all monuments and buried them under the desert sand.
"Up to now, we have completely unearthed and restored a huge asymmetrical pyramid, known as the Grand Pyramid. A terraced temple and a smaller pyramid are in an advanced state of excavation," Giuseppe Orefici, an archaeologist who has spent decades excavating Cahuachi and has also worked with the CNR researchers, wrote in the conference paper.
Featuring a 300-by-328-foot base, the newly discovered pyramid consists of at least "four degrading terraces which suggest a truncated pyramid similar to the Grand Pyramid." With seven levels, this imposing monument was sculpted from the landscape and enhanced by large adobe walls.
"This is an interesting finding. As with the Grand Pyramid, it is likely that also this pyramid contains the remains of human sacrifices," Andrea Drusini, an anthropologist at Padova University, told Discovery News.
In previous excavations at Cahuachi, Drusini found some 20 severed "offering heads" at various locations inside the Grand Pyramid.
"They have circular holes cut into the forehead and were perfectly prepared from an anatomical point of view," Drusini said.
The researchers are now investigating other buried structures next to the newly discovered pyramid.
"This innovative technology opens up new perspectives for the detection of buried adobe monuments in Cahuachi and elsewhere," said Masini. "Once we have more information about the size and shape of the structures, we might turn to virtual archaeology to bring the pyramid and its nearby structures back to life."
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