1. LiDAR
It’s clearly no exaggeration to state that LiDAR technology has transformed the face of archaeology, with some suggesting that the device has essentially launched a revolution within the profession.
LiDAR works by blasting out hundreds of thousands of pulses of light toward the ground, generally at a height of around 606 meters. As those pulses of light bounce back to the aeroplane, they’re measured, and each point’s GPS position is registered to form a 3D map of the region.
This technique is exceptionally precise at ground level, exposing the minute features of ancient sites, even revealing burial mounds and subterranean towns.
In the early 2010s, researchers were surprised when LiDAR technology stumbled onto a forgotten Mayan metropolis. In another example, it found tens of thousands of archaeologically important buildings in a region of Mexico that had previously been deemed to be inconsequential.
It will surprise you to find out that a huge region of New England in the US is of great interest to archaeologists since throughout the 1700s these woodland areas were invaded by roads and communities. These communities mainly vanished during the 1950s as nature regained the region. Because of the extensive forest cover in these places, it’s difficult for archaeologists to get a hold on these sites, but LiDAR is helping to unveil the mysteries of these abandoned towns.
2. Forensic Technology
Today archaeologists are able to utilise a range of technologies to recreate historical events that are normally only thought of as instruments employed by police. Forensic tactics and technology may be enormously valuable to academics. From studying the bone characteristics of a specimen, scientists may successfully recreate how that historical individual died.
DNA in mummies and other petrified remains (such those Neolithic corpses found in melting tundra) may help determine the sex of ancient individuals, as well as that person’s ancestral lineage.
In 2012, a human male skeleton was unearthed by an archaeological team under a car park in Leicester, England. Thanks to DNA research it was found that the skeleton belonged to none other than Richard III, who perished in the Battle of Bosworth in 1485.
3. Radiometric Dating
Relative dating occurs when things closer to the surface are assumed to be younger than those that are located in deeper levels of soil or strata. There are obvious issues with this technique since rodents and natural disasters may cause artifacts to be relocated and so change the “context” in which archaeologists uncover them.
Absolute dating is significantly more accurate and successful in establishing the real age of an item. There are a multitude of forms of radiometric dating, each with differing degrees of accuracy. Radiocarbon dating, for example, detects the decay of Carbon14 isotopes in artifacts containing organic ingredients and is accurate for things that are less than 50,000 years old, up to a younger limit of 400 years.
But archaeologists may also employ other elements, such as potassium-argon dating, which produces reliable readings of up to 4.3 billion years to roughly 100,000 years if the correct procedures are followed. Uranium-lead dating is exceptionally precise, calculating the age of items up to 250,000 years old in certain instances.
4. Portable X-Ray Fluorescence Spectroscopy
Handheld XRF devices are often utilised by scientists, academics, and students at universities as well as in the field. These instruments employ x-rays to evaluate artifacts and samples, giving archaeologists with fantastic information on soil composition and invisible pigments that have faded on pottery, and the gadgets are especially suitable for evaluating obsidian objects.
Portable x-ray fluorescence is also a little more cost-effective than certain procedures like CT scanners.
XRF methods have also benefited museums and colleges tremendously in detecting whether prospective relics are fakes. This is achieved by comparing information on the various paints and chemicals used to color an item with our understanding of what ancient peoples had access to and actively utilised. If contemporary chemicals are identified in a piece, then it’s more than probable that the item in question is a fake.
5. Shallow Geophysics
While subsurface geophysics may be a time-consuming procedure, the probes employed in this approach give considerable information to archaeologists who seek to research sites where neighbouring populations are starting to increase.
As discussed previously, human habitation has the capacity to chemically affect the soil of archaeological sites and that also applies for sites near big population concentrations. These areas may cause major harm to historical monuments that should be preserved. But shallow geophysics provides a means to build a picture and reconstruct what places were originally like in their prime by harnessing Earth’s magnetic field and even gravity.
This technique is basically a sort of remote sensing that concentrates on a depth of around 1.5 meters (rather than ground-penetrating radar, which has a significantly higher depth of penetration).
Magnetometery simply detects the intensity of the magnetic field, utilising it to map the reflected pattern of items buried in the soil. These approaches used in combination with GPS technology have been highly beneficial in surveying monuments like Stonehenge.
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