Sarah Parcak

This paper evaluates the results of a 2016 study examining high-resolution open-source satellite data from 2002–2013 for sites across Egypt that mapped looting and site encroachment. The author features a looted tripartite coffin (now returned to Egypt) to suggest how satellite imagery might narrow down or provide the general provenience of looted objects and their possible site origins. Mapping where looting has occurred, the intensity of the looting, and emerging future threats to sites are important, but there is no established method at present to work backwards from unprovenanced looted items. Through an assessment of when objects enter countries illegally, the time-period of the looted objects, and an analysis of satellite imagery looting data concerning their country of origin, it is possible to suggest a potential provenance for looted objects. This approach shows how satellite data can be integrated into traditional provenance research. This study presents a workflow for how other projects might utilize a similar approach in other countries.

This paper will assess the most recently available open access high-resolution optical satellite data (0.3 m–0.6 m) and its detection of buried ancient features versus ground based remote sensing tools. It also discusses the importance of CORONA satellite data to evaluate landscape changes over the past 50 years surrounding sites. The study concentrates on Egypt’s Nile Delta, which is threatened by rising sea and water tables and urbanization. Many ancient coastal sites will be lost in the next few decades, thus this paper emphasizes the need to map them before they disappear. It shows that high resolution satellites can sometimes provide the same general picture on ancient sites in the Egyptian Nile Delta as ground based remote sensing, with relatively sandier sedimentary and degrading tell environments, during periods of rainfall, and higher groundwater conditions. Research results also suggest potential solutions for rapid mapping of threatened Delta sites, and urge a collaborative global effort to maps them before they disappear.

We appreciate Michael Fradley and Nichole Sheldrick's response to our 2016 Antiquity paper. They claim that our results are “potentially misleading”, that there is an incorrect “emphasis on looting as the most significant problem facing Egypt's heritage” and that our prediction model is flawed. Our paper, however, clearly focuses on the major population centre of Egypt—the Nile Valley and Delta regions—where the bulk of the archaeological sites are located. This is a basic Egyptological fact.

Satellite evidence of archaeological site looting in Egypt: 2002–2013 - Volume 90 Issue 349 - Sarah Parcak, David Gathings, Chase Childs, Greg Mumford, Eric Cline

A site near Tuskegee, Alabama was examined for vector-host activities of eastern equine encephalomyelitis virus (EEEV). Land cover maps of the study site were created in ArcInfo 9.2® from QuickBird data encompassing visible and near-infrared (NIR) band information (0.45 to 0.72 μm) acquired July 15, 2008. Georeferenced mosquito and bird sampling sites, and their associated land cover attributes from the study site, were overlaid onto the satellite data. SAS 9.1.4® was used to explore univariate statistics and to generate regression models using the field and remote-sampled mosquito and bird data. Regression models indicated that Culex erracticus and Northern Cardinals were the most abundant mosquito and bird species, respectively. Spatial linear prediction models were then generated in Geostatistical Analyst Extension of ArcGIS 9.2®. Additionally, a model of the study site was generated, based on a Digital Elevation Model (DEM), using ArcScene extension of ArcGIS 9.2®.