> To get a detailed lay of the land, Frachetti and Maksudov equipped a drone with remote-sensing technology called lidar (light detection and ranging). Drones are tightly regulated in Uzbekistan, but the researchers managed to get the necessary permits to fly one at the site. A lidar scanner uses laser pulses to map the features of land below. The technology has been increasingly used in archaeology—in the past few years it has helped uncover a lost Maya city sprawling beneath the rainforest canopy in Guatemala.
> This method has its limitations, Silvia says—namely, it often turns up false positives. It’s also impossible to confirm which features come from which time period without more excavation.
Despite the limitations, it's still great that this technology is making inroads in archaeology. Would be interested to see this put to work in the Sahara and other mostly unexplored/unexcavated areas. Seems to be a low-cost but potentially high-reward project.
It's only low cost by comparison to excavation, which is extraordinarily expensive. Good lidars would consume a considerable portion of the equipment budget for a field team. Back when I did this stuff, my budgets for a field season were less than a week's worth of my tech job salary.
One time I dragged a fixed wing out to the middle of Central Asia to do some aerial surveys. It went up, caught in some wind, and immediately dropped into a river never to be seen again. That one hurt.
History is so fascinating. You read about outlandish locations, cultures, peoples as you would in a fantasy
novel, then you realise it actually existed.
> Metallurgy may be a key part of how the city could sustain itself at such a high altitude. The mountains are rich in iron ore and have dense juniper forests, which could be burned to fuel the smelting process. The researchers have also uncovered coins from across modern-day Uzbekistan, Maksudov says, suggesting the city may have been a hub for trade. It doesn’t appear to have been strictly a mining settlement, either—at Tashbulak, a cemetery contains the remains of women, elderly people and infants.
>
> “We have realized that this was a large urban center, which was integrated into the Silk Road network and dragged the Silk Road caravans toward mountains ... because they had their own products to offer,” Maksudov says.
Checking, did anyone else get to this part of the article and think "Yes, this shall be my anthropological model for dwarves in my D&D game"?
> To get a detailed lay of the land, Frachetti and Maksudov equipped a drone with remote-sensing technology called lidar (light detection and ranging). Drones are tightly regulated in Uzbekistan, but the researchers managed to get the necessary permits to fly one at the site. A lidar scanner uses laser pulses to map the features of land below. The technology has been increasingly used in archaeology—in the past few years it has helped uncover a lost Maya city sprawling beneath the rainforest canopy in Guatemala.
> This method has its limitations, Silvia says—namely, it often turns up false positives. It’s also impossible to confirm which features come from which time period without more excavation.
Despite the limitations, it's still great that this technology is making inroads in archaeology. Would be interested to see this put to work in the Sahara and other mostly unexplored/unexcavated areas. Seems to be a low-cost but potentially high-reward project.
It's only low cost by comparison to excavation, which is extraordinarily expensive. Good lidars would consume a considerable portion of the equipment budget for a field team. Back when I did this stuff, my budgets for a field season were less than a week's worth of my tech job salary.
One time I dragged a fixed wing out to the middle of Central Asia to do some aerial surveys. It went up, caught in some wind, and immediately dropped into a river never to be seen again. That one hurt.
Rejoice in the fact that you'll have unintentionally guided some 31st century archaeologist.
Or triggered a host of ancient-aliens conspiracy theories after they find remains of a drone atop a 4500yo pyramid.
History is so fascinating. You read about outlandish locations, cultures, peoples as you would in a fantasy novel, then you realise it actually existed.
Some more info here: https://saielab.wustl.edu/all-projects/tugunbulak
> Metallurgy may be a key part of how the city could sustain itself at such a high altitude. The mountains are rich in iron ore and have dense juniper forests, which could be burned to fuel the smelting process. The researchers have also uncovered coins from across modern-day Uzbekistan, Maksudov says, suggesting the city may have been a hub for trade. It doesn’t appear to have been strictly a mining settlement, either—at Tashbulak, a cemetery contains the remains of women, elderly people and infants.
>
> “We have realized that this was a large urban center, which was integrated into the Silk Road network and dragged the Silk Road caravans toward mountains ... because they had their own products to offer,” Maksudov says.
Checking, did anyone else get to this part of the article and think "Yes, this shall be my anthropological model for dwarves in my D&D game"?