During the Cold War , the United States fly U2 undercover agent plane over Europe , the Middle East , and key eastern Asia in search of potential military targets . These mission inadvertently gathered diachronic data , which archaeologists are now using for scientific purposes .
Newresearchpublished last month in the science daybook Advances in Archaeological Practice describes the first archaeologic use of declassified U2 spy aeroplane epitome . The authors of the unexampled paper , Emily Hammer of the University of Pennsylvania and Jason Ur of Harvard University , used the historic ikon to distinguish prehistoric hunt traps , ancient irrigation canals , and erstwhile marsh villages .
flee 70,000 feet above the ground , U2 spy carpenter’s plane capture yard of icon during the fifties and 1960s . The photographs taken during this foreign mission , computer code - named CHESS , were eventually declassify by the United States in 1997 , but the data was n’t directly index or rake .
Declassified U2 spy plane images showing desert kites in Jordan—stone structures used to trap animals between 5,000 and 8,000 years ago.Image: (Emily Hammer and Jason Ur/Advances in Archaeological Practice)
Inspired by a Chinese researcher who used the U2 images to view historic aerial imagery of his hometown , Hammer and Ur resolve to take a shot at it themselves and see if the copious amounts of declassified datum had any scientific Charles Frederick Worth . They had serious reason to be optimistic ; much of the landscape in Europe , the Middle East , and central easterly Asia has changed since the Cold War , making these aerial record both historically and archaeologically important .
To make the data usable , however , Hammer and Ur had to consistently build an index of the U2 imagery . The researchers selected plastic film rolls from the National Archives ’ storage snapper in Kansas , which were then transported to the aerial film section in Maryland . The select film rolls include thousands of high- and low - resolution frames — literally 100 of feet of film — which were unspooled and analyze over a easy tabular array . Hammer and Ur photographed the negative using a 100 - millimeter macro lens . The pic were then stitched together , adjusted , and geo - referenced using software .
“ As you bend the bobbin of a picture show roll following the path of the U2 plane , you may not make out on the button what you ’ll see in unfamiliar places , so there ’s often a signified of exploration and discovery , ” said Hammer in a statement . “ Other times , the pilots were fly over region I knew by heart from travel and study , and I would almost guard my breathing space , hop that the aeroplane had veered just a niggling to the right or left . ”
An ancient canal system as seen by the U2 spy planes (top), and how the same area appears today (bottom).Image: (Image: Emily Hammer and Jason Ur/Advances in Archaeological Practice)
To which she added : “ The photograph supply a fascinating looking at at the Middle East several decades ago , prove , for deterrent example , historical Aleppo long before the monumental destruction wrought in the ongoing civic war . ”
The resulting power allowed the scientist to take an unprecedented look at desert kite in Eastern Jordan . Some 5,000 to 8,000 twelvemonth ago , these gem - wall structure were used to trap gazelles and other animals . As Hammer and Ur point out in the new newspaper publisher , these and other structures were in much better form during the Cold War than they are today .
“ We were capable to map many features that have been destroyed since 1960 and are no longer visible in modern imagery , ” the writer wrote in the study . “ This is in particular true for Greenwich Village , corrals , and wheel structures , which are smaller than desert kites and more vulnerable to entire erasure by modern agriculture and development . ”
The U2 images taken in southern Iraq show the layout, size, and environmental position of Marsh Arab communities in the late 1950s and early 1960s, many of which were wiped out after the construction of massive hydroelectric dams, and after the government of Saddam Hussein deliberately drained the marshes.Image: (Emily Hammer and Jason Ur/Advances in Archaeological Practice)
The researchers also analyzed nearly 3,000 - yr - old canal system built by the ancient Assyrians in what is now northern Iraq . This irrigation organisation “ give the royal Capital , made agricultural surplusage production potential , and provided water to villages , ” noted Hammer in the statement .
The index also also used to do some more recent history , namely a survey of Marsh Arab community in southern Iraq go steady back to the fifties and sixties . These community disappeared after hydroelectric dams were work up in Turkey , Syria , and Iraq . The new data admit the researchers to visualize the layout , size of it , and environmental side of these historic places .
This work will now be put online and made usable to other researchers , who can go through the flesh and do their own landscape and aerial archaeology . Which is very coolheaded , especially given how much work was postulate to create this incredible — and highly useable — diachronic book .
Correction : A previous rendering of this article incorrectly described the altitude of the U2 undercover agent plane as 17,000 feet , when it was actually 70,000 feet . We repent the error .
[ Advances in Archaeological Practice ]
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