Historicity

You, yes you, can do archaeology without sacrificing a decade of your life to the slavering maw of higher education! Last year, an Italian programmer made the news when he stumbled across the ruins of a Roman villa using Google Earth. Since then, other archaeologists have started tapping into Google Earth as a free and easy way to scout out potential archaeological sites:

Madry got out his laptop, fired up Google Earth and looked over lands in Burgundy, near his research area. Immediately, he spotted features that, to his trained eye, resembled outlines of Iron Age, Bronze Age, ancient Roman and medieval residences, forts, roads and monuments.

In 25 years on the ground, “I’ve found a handful of archaeological sites. I found more in the first five, six, seven hours than I’ve found in years of traditional field surveys and aerial archaeology,” he said.

The Google Earth Blog has some additional comments. Very cool!