What the heat wave in Britain has revealed
When I first read the headline of this article—“‘Millennia of human activity’: heatwave reveals lost UK archaeological sites”—I imagined something like a fantasy movie in which some hulking ancient ruin comes heaving out of the ground, astounding the watching crowd.
But that’s not what’s actually happening, which is this sort of thing:
Those are what’s called scorch marks:
Lost sites have been turning up all over Britain and Ireland, ploughed flat at ground level but showing up as parch marks from the air, in areas where grass and crops grow at different heights, or show in different colours, over buried foundations and ditches. A treasure trove of discoveries, including ancient field boundaries, lost villages, burial mounds and military structures, was revealed on Wednesday, recorded during the summer by aerial archaeologists flying over the landscape for Historic England…
Among dozens of sites revealed in Cornwall were an unusual prehistoric settlement surrounded by concentric ditches at Lansallos, and an iron age settlement surrounded by a circular ditch with marks of other circular and rectangular structures within one field at St Ive – evidence of continuity of settlement over at least 4,000 years.
What is believed to be a Roman farm, with buildings, fields and paddocks, has showed up at Bicton in Devon, and at Stogumber in Somerset four bronze and iron age farms have been spotted, one with signs of having been abandoned and a new settlement built on top.
It’s as though these structures and settlements had been written in invisible ink, and the drought was the catalyst for revealing the messages they hold. Excavation will further reveal them.
It’s interesting, too, that in a slight parallel, some invisible inks are revealed by the process of being heated, which usually turns them brown.
Much of this type of satellite and drone imaging has been going on for some time with or without heat or other weather anomalies. The giant meteor impact crater in the Yucatan peninsula that is believed to be responsible for the dinosaur and KT extinction was discovered this way.
A former colleague does this type of work for the DoD though much is classified. They use hyperspectral imaging (Infrared and UV added). He hired a botanist some years ago to help with the plant/tree analysis.
A cool factoid from WWII was that much of the allied airborne photo reconnaissance was analyzed with stereo vision. If a plane is traveling at an altitude of 1 mile, and two identical photos are taken, except that the plane has travelled 0.1 mile between the two shots, then it is just like seeing nearby objects with two eyes.
Aerial archaeology. Old stuff. Different things show up in different lighting, different seasons, different photo angles. Stone age/bronze age/iron age/Roman/Dark Age/medieval, all on top of each other. Ground surveys, too – when the vegetation is sparse, they organize crowds of school kids to fan out over fields, looking for artifacts (mostly broken bits of pottery, which last damn near forever), map it all, and file the map away somewhere. They’ve been documenting this stuff for at least fifty years, mainly so that nobody puts a highway or parking lot on top of something potentially interesting. It can be very hard to get a building permit anywhere in Europe.
You see this sort of thing in central Texas where natural rock buried in the soil is much closer to the surface in some areas than in others. During cooler parts of the year the underground rock doesn’t get hot so the grass can grow evenly over the entire yard. But in the hottest parts of the summer, the sun heats the underground rocks to the point where they burn the grass from underneath resulting in dead spots over the buried rocks.
The US did analysis of ancient aquifers in Egypt using x-ray cameras in satellites to let the Russians know they could not hide solos.
In “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” Doyle wrote about ancient huts in the Moor that were stone age era. I don’t know if they are there but there appear to be some in that area.
also when things cool in the evening you can see stuff as well if you look in infrred as disturbed soil dos not conduct heat the same…
Recently reseachers have discovered an enormous previously unknown Mayan city beneath the canopy of the Peten jungle in Guatemala using lidar mapping technology. The lidar system fires laser pulses to create a topographical map of the surface beneath the jungle. It has also been used to unearth ancient cities in Cambodia.
Archaeologists.. still playing with tools often used by kids.
No wonder the dating system is all messed up.
When the UK votes in a few more Muslim overlords this sort of curiosity about the past before Mohammed will come to an end. It’s not just the Taliban who have a hostile view of what to them is godless, empty, meaningless, prehistory, knowledge of which provides no obvious power or advantage in the here and now.
Miklos – at least America doesn’t have any really ancient statues to blow up —
Aesopfan: no, just the relatively recent ones to pull down.
From The Master:
WELAND’S SWORD
Puck’s Song
See you the dimpled track that runs,
All hollow through the wheat?
O that was where they hauled the guns
That smote King Philip’s fleet!
See you our little mill that clacks,
So busy by the brook?
She has ground her corn and paid her tax
Ever since Domesday Book.
See you our stilly woods of oak,
And the dread ditch beside?
O that was where the Saxons broke,
On the day that Harold died!
See you the windy levels spread
About the gates of Rye?
O that was where the Northmen fled,
When Alfred’s ships came by!
See you our pastures wide and lone,
Where the red oxen browse?
O there was a City thronged and known,
Ere London boasted a house!
And see you, after rain, the trace
Of mound and ditch and wall?
O that was a Legion’s camping-place,
When Caesar sailed from Gaul!
And see you marks that show and fade,
Like shadows on the Downs?
O they are the lines the Flint Men made,
To guard their wondrous towns!
Trackway and Camp and City lost,
Salt Marsh where now is corn;
Old Wars, old Peace, old Arts that cease,
And so was England born!
She is not any common Earth,
Water or Wood or Air,
But Merlin’s Isle of Gramarye,
Where you and I will fare.