Dialogues in Heritage Science: The future of archaeology(?): Space-based approaches to ancient landscapes

March 15, 2016

Wednesday, April 6th, 2016 at 5:00 PM

Location: Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall St, New Haven, CT 06511

Hosts: Mary Lui (Master of Timothy Dwight College), Stefan Simon (Director Yale Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage)

Contact: laurie.batza@yale.edu

This lecture will describe how archaeology has evolved from a primarily ground-based endeavor to one using a wide range of space and airborne- remote sensing tools, with tremendous implications for the future of the field. She has used satellite imagery combined with ground based excavation and survey to uncover new tombs, settlements, forts, and potential pyramids in various world regions. The talk will share exciting new results from the field, as well as how these technologies can assist in the mapping of ongoing looting in the Middle East. The goals of the 2016 TED Prize (a crowd-sourcing platform for citizen science space archaeology) will also be shared.

Sarah Parcak is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and the Founding Director of the UAB Laboratory for Global Observation. Her research represents the first large-scale landscape archaeology approaches to the field of Egyptology. Sarah is the winner of the 2016 TED Prize.

Click here to see Dr. Parcak interviewed on the The Late Show with Stephen Colbert