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" Scientists use satellites to track weather, map ice sheet melting, detect diseases, show ecosystem change... the list goes on and on. I think nearly every scientific field benefits or could benefit from satellite imagery analysis. "

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" What satellites help to show us is we've actually only found a fraction of a percent of ancient settlements and sites all over the world... It's the most exciting time in history to be an archaeologist. "

Sarah Parcak

Help

Show

History

" The only technology that can 'see' beneath the ground is radar imagery. But satellite imagery also allows scientists to map short- and long-term changes to the Earth's surface. Buried archaeological remains affect the overlying vegetation, soils and even water in different ways, depending on the landscapes you're examining. "

" All over the world, we're finding out that, you know, whether it's Egypt or Syria or Central America, what satellites are showing is that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of previously unknown settlements all over the world, and what archaeology does, it helps us to understand this common humanity that we have. "

" I've always loved teaching and reading and talking to people, and my grandfather was a professor. "

" It's an important tool to focus where we're excavating. It gives us a much bigger perspective on archaeological sites. We have to think bigger, and that's what the satellites allow us to do. "

" What we did is we used NASA topography data to map out the landscape, very subtle changes. We started to be able to see where the Nile used to flow. "

" I dig in the sand, and I play with pretty pictures, so I never really left kindergarten. "

" Satellite datasets like WorldView can see objects as small as 1.5 feet in diameter. In 2014, WorldView-3 will be able to see objects a small as a foot. "

" I can't tell you the number of times I've been walking over an archaeological site. And you can't see anything on the ground, and pull back hundreds of miles in space, and all of a sudden you can see streets and roads and houses and even pyramids. "

" Before doing fieldwork in Middle Egypt, I analyzed satellite imagery to determine exactly where I wanted to go. Within three weeks, I found about 70 sites. If I had approached this as a traditional foot survey, it would have taken me three and a half years. "

Sarah Parcak

Survey

Three

" You can theorize as much as you want about what you think you're seeing, but until you get out there and dig, you can't tell exactly what it is. "

" We have so many thousands of sites to find across the globe and new techniques to test. The field keeps evolving with the technology, which makes things exciting. "

" Archaeologists use datasets from NASA and commercial satellites, processing the information using various off-the-shelf computer programs. These datasets allow us to see beyond the visible part of the light spectrum into the near, middle, and far infrared. "

" We can tell from the imagery a tomb was looted from a particular period of time, and we can alert INTERPOL to watch out for antiquities from that time that may be offered for sale. "

" What if Hiram Bingham had the technology to find hundreds of other archaeological sites at the same time and create entire 3-D maps of the ancient landscape accurate to within a few inches? "

" If you really want to be a good archaeologist, you have to understand ancient DNA; you have to understand chemical analysis to figure out the composition of ancient pots. You have to be able to study human remains. You need to be able to do computer processing and, in some cases, computer programming. "

" Discoveries aren't made by one person exploring by themselves. And discoveries aren't made overnight. People don't see the thousands of hours that go into it. "

Sarah Parcak

Exploring

Person

" How do you find a buried city in a vast landscape? Finding it randomly would be the equivalent of locating a needle in a haystack, blindfolded, wearing baseball mitts. "

" There's even an aircraft sensor system that sends down hundreds of thousands of pulses of light measured at different return rates. It allows you to literally strip away vegetation and see entire cities beneath the rain forest canopy. This is the unbelievable future of archaeology. "

" In archaeology, context is everything. Objects allow us to reconstruct the past. Taking artifacts from a temple or an ancient private house is like emptying out a time capsule. "

" I've found numerous things - settlements, temples, possible pyramids, forts, roads - the list goes on and on. I'm not as interested in the discoveries as the types of questions they help us formulate. "

Sarah Parcak

Help

Roads

" With population pressures, urbanization, and modernization encroaching, we're in a race against time. Why not use the most advanced tools we have to map, quantify, and protect our past? "

" I hope my work contributes to understanding long-term patterns of human behavior and how we survive, thrive, or fail during times of environmental, social, and economic crisis. "

" Scorpions like holes. We had to put our arms in the holes to dig out the smelting residues. We always performed critter checks before an excavation, but one morning, I put an arm in and felt a sharp pierce. When I brought my hand out, it was red and already swelling. "

Sarah Parcak

Red

Morning

" Looting speaks to a lack of economic opportunities - frankly, we all would loot, too, if our families' continued survival depended on it. "

" If you find a series of linear shapes in the same alignment as known archaeological features, and they match excavated examples, you still need to excavate to confirm, but you can be fairly sure that the imagery is accurate. "

" Google Earth is an incredible resource because from hundreds of miles in space, we can zoom in, and we can find things. Everyone always looks for their house first. That is the tip of the iceberg with remote sensing. "

" People were looting tombs 5,000 years ago in Egypt as soon as people were buried, but the problem is only getting worse and worse. "

" We want to excite the world about what's out there. But we don't want them to say, 'Oh, there are lots of sites in Egypt - let's loot.' "

Sarah Parcak

World

Egypt

" Choosing an unconventional career path - I am not a traditional Egyptologist by any means. I found what I love, and I have stuck with it. "