Archeology - exploring the past with modern technology | DW History Documentary

Technical technological advancement is so rapid that it is almost impossible to keep up in the span of a lifetime Rancic, we have discovered thousands of new sites from a variety of different periods Duncan seeing the data allows us to sharpen the focus of our research and pinpoint exactly where carry out the excavation in archaeology, the most advanced

technology

sometimes assumes the appearance of an old-fashioned handcart, while archaeologists, root positioning and Roseanne shooting, set up their equipment in a meadow, their nearby colleagues are preparing a device that looks taller. -tech the geomagnetic device is so heavy that it has to be towed by a vehicle both devices do the same only this one is larger and can study a wider area a group of German and Irish archaeologists have met in the old church in the screen to 15th-century sites steeped in mysticism, but the church ruins are almost young compared to the ancient monuments that dot the surrounding area northwest of Dublin.

Screen Hill faces the cultural treasure of the islands. The Hill of Tara, an ancient gathering place, the region is also home to giant megalithic tombs unique monuments built around 3000 BC. C. by people who left nothing but their tombs a digital reconstruction gives an impression of the interiors of the tombs many built in alignment with astronomical events archaeologists dragged the sensors across the meadow to determine what lies beneath The surface of this device It is 2 meters wide and is equipped with five sensors. You can cover two to three Hectors per day with a device like this, making it a quick way to collect and evaluate archaeological data.

Equipped with 16 sensors, the magnetometer of its colleagues is even more effective. collecting archaeological evidence, so we have to be careful here because if we swap the cables, the sensors will transmit the wrong positions, that's why we do a final check to see that everything is working, so that the status test tells you that the equipment is

exploring

. traces of ancient life underground without the intervention of a shovel is a non-invasive technique called prospecting now they are connecting the geomagnetic device to the computer the computer has the task of recording all the measurement data and showing us where we have to prospect even when we are driving across the Invictus terrain we went ahead to explore half the 16-sensor device is used to take geomagnetic measurements of the ground we really wondered what we were finding mysterious the landscape holds a

history

that began thousands of years ago the job description of archaeologists demands knowledge not only of

history

but also of

technology

and nowadays it helps if you don't mind being followed by curious horses, we don't know exactly what year the church was founded and we also want to know a little more about the history before the The first sources documentaries because we have some references, they say that from the 8th century to the 10th century, they refer to the hill on the screen being a burial place called point of sight, they show us our exact position with the help of GPS data, archaeologists can steer your vehicle. across the meadow with the precision they need to generate a complete image of the ground the sensors that you drag behind your vehicle measure the Earth's magnetic field that is underground like an invisible veil the presence of walls or graves alters the pattern of magnetism in the ground and that is exactly what the sensors can measure, the computer records these disturbances and reveals a long forgotten structure, a shadow of the last 1,700 kilometers further east, in Berlin, in the developer's virtual reality studio game developer Thomas Bremer is working on a different kind of digital archaeology. a game, but the game is not, the designers are working with Berlin archaeologist Kai Kuhlmeier,

modern

technology meets ancient history, their cooperation has produced some surprising discoveries, for example, the Hittites had an unusual reading technique , this one from left to right, this one from right to left. this one from left to right this again from right to left and then back yeah, like in wavy lines, that's amazing.

Archaeologists are stuck in centuries past and that applies to their methodology for the rapid development of computer technology in general, but it is also virtual archaeology. something we need to understand and when I tell people I'm working with a game designer they just shut down because gaming technology sounds so frivolous but in fact this job is the complete opposite, it looks like a video game but it's actually A very accurate copy of a real temple is the Temple of the Time God of Aleppo, one of the most important deities of the ancient Middle East. The oldest parts of the temple date back to the 3rd millennium BC.

C. with visualization software the operator can make the sun rise and the set allows a view of the complex with changing daylight, the viewer has a feeling of the size and proportion of the space that this damage provides, although we are not actually standing In this temple, we can judge and see things very differently than we could on a normal computer monitor. Tomorrow, am I at the counter? Yeah, just the fact that I can stand here and, for example, crouch down and get a three-dimensional view of the object, that's something I can't do on a regular computer monitor.

Aleppo in Syria, the temple. It was located in the heart of the city in the medieval Citadel since 2012, the rebels hiding inside used the Citadel to fire on government troops. The result was that 5,000 years of history turned to dust in a brutal civil war in early 2011, the temple still intact. Meyers' team from Berlin was on site to scan the complex security system in the country, it still seemed so stable that the professor not only brought his students, but also took his young daughter on the trip below Amelia, You will see another representation of the weather. God riding his chariot here presented his combat ready what is this? that is the symbol of God and that is a mace initially it was just research but the data required new meaning through the ravages of the Syrian civil war we had an unimaginably large amount of data but when the Civil War broke out and we could no longer reach There, we are left wondering what we do now.

It sounds almost cynical now, but we were in an ideal position. We were the only team of archaeologists in the Near East who had scanned everything in 3D. a stroke of good luck in the midst of terrible misfortunes is younggook the temple was severely damaged in the war but at least its memory has been preserved digitally the scanned data is so precise that the inscriptions are even more legible in virtual reality than in real life like that is he being hobbin on top when I learned to dig I had a piece of paper and a pencil that's mom that was all today we can use a scanner that is much more accurate than any reproduction on the sheet of paper of course it also gives arise new fields of research and we can see you know harvesting olives at home this is car generating exact copies is a field that also interests maritime archaeologists around the world measuring and marking shipwrecks underwater is one of the most demanding and Arduous The tasks and conditions are not always as good as here in the Baltic Sea on the German island of Rügen, only exceptional shipwrecks are rescued and restored, such as the 14th century Bremen COG, one of the largest ships in the world.

It took 18 years of expensive conservation. work to restore it to its full glory to learn more about this 1380 merchant ship archaeologists created a digital model of the kaga the construction of a ship like this is quite special everything on the ship is interconnected if you move one part just 2 centimeters it distorts the entire shape of the ship so that the computer can give you an overview. This is not a 23 meter long boat. You don't have to search the entire boat for the place responsible for the deformation. Instead, you can clearly see how each step you take affects the entire structure and check whether a given step has changed the overall shape.

The technology allowed researchers, for example, to discover how the COG navigated without having to lower it into the water. There is a shipwreck on Rügen that is not worth it. It is being recovered, but is still of interest to archaeologists, so what is special about this find is that it dates to the mid or perhaps even early 16th century, a period in which very few ships have been found and there is evidence that the word may have come from a manual. The strange codes that exist or the sand dams are oil, even today certain details of the ship can be represented more clearly if they are copied by hand underwater, but the main work is done by a special camera; hundreds of images are needed which are then used to generate a 3D image. computer model of the wreck, while the wood has been perfectly preserved in the nutrient-poor waters of the Baltic, the current has eroded the platform to the ground.

Deb, it's Tobias. The best thing about this is that you never see a wreck like this on a dive because the visibility is bad, but you can create a model like this even if you have only 30 centimeters of visibility, you just have to take enough photos so that they overlap and then you will be looking at something that no one has ever seen in that form. for example, the ballast stones from the frigates that are still in the bottom of the ship, without them the ship would not have been able to carry its load of heavy cannons.

One of the most spectacular pieces in the collection of the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin goes unnoticed by visitors, but the digital world is coming to the rescue. Kai Col Myers' latest project is the richly carved wooden dome that originally stood in the Nasstrac palaces of the world famous Alhambra in Granada Spain in Berlin the dome is forced to lead a wallflower existence for conservation reasons the dome is very poorly lit here in Berlin visitors cannot appreciate it in the same way they could ignore the conditions of light in the Alhambra. Our goal is to recreate those lighting conditions virtually to allow visitors both here at the Berlin museum and visitors to the Alhambra an experience of the dome in its original context in a context of invasion such as Italy in 1891 the banker of our territory in Grenaa received permission from the Spanish authorities to move the dome to Germany had acquired a small palace in the Alhambra from a Spanish opera singer and then bequeathed it.

He gave it to the Spanish state, but decided to keep the dome for a while. He decorated his villa in Berlin before donating it to the museum. The dome was originally painted and gilded. It is made of cedar and poplar wood and consists of dozens of parts. a stellar adornment of celestial beauty one of the most important prehistoric landscapes in the world is situated in a bend of the River Islands Boyne northwest of Dublin the corridor tombs of Newgrange Daffy and Nath were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1993 the mound The central Neolithic of the mouth has a circumference of 275 meters and is surrounded by 20 smaller tombs.

The meaning of numerous engraved stones remains a mystery. Many stories and legends are associated with the enormous mounds. They are said to be the birthplace of heroes. hidden dwellings of elves and kings the mound tombs of Newgrange, Darth and Mouth are located within sight of each other. It has long been standard practice in

archeology

to use drones to get an overview of the landscape. Drones collect data to build digital models of the terrain at computer sites with churches dating back to the Middle Ages. They often have an older heritage, invisible, underground evil rulers seeking to exert political, military or religious control over a territory would occupy any place that had a particular meaning, so we use these ancient sites as a starting point because it is easy to imagine that with Christianization these ancient sites were chosen as places to build churches and, in fact, when the time comes to evaluate the data of their geomagnetic study, archaeologists discover round structures that appear to predate the small medieval town;

They may be traces of circular tombs enclosing burial mounds or they could be round. house in their distribution these objects do not refer to this complex of graves so it can be assumed that they date from another period discovering hidden relics without excavating is based on technology that originated in military applications that Tim Takeo physically from certain geophysical methods are based In measuring differences in the Earth's magnetic field, the technology comes from hunting for submarines that could be located underwater because they created disturbances in the Earth's magnetic field. This is a method that we now use in a modified form in

archeology

Watson Axel Paz Lucien E is surrounded by traces of the past his work focuses on the mountainous plateaufrom globert near Frankfurt, which was first settled thousands of years ago, the Celts in particular left their mark on the area today it is known that the plateau was surrounded by a magnificent wall that did not serve as The fortification of the slope was quite steep, rather it was designed to mark the power and splendor of the Celtic princes.

It began here in the so-called Neolithic with the appearance of the first farmers and ranchers in the Vetta region, the first settlement in Here the Mitchellsburg culture did not have walls. Development continued until the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age, around 500 BC. C., was colonized by the first peoples that we could classify as Celts and they were also the first to fortify this plateau sewn into a discreet place. The aerial photo taken in 1988 opened the door to one of the most spectacular discoveries in archeology in Germany. Archaeologists have been using aerial photography for decades to identify structures in the ground, but this method only produces results after long periods of drought, each here in the field.

Here you can relatively clearly see a darker structure in the grain, which indicates that the grain is being supplied with more moisture in this particular location, so it can be assumed that there is a trench there that retains moisture better. There is a place where the tomb of a Celtic prince was discovered deep in the countryside at the foot of the world, and the corresponding mound had long since been plowed. The massive hill has since been rebuilt and a museum has been set up behind the hill. A sandstone figure was found near the tomb. The figure was equipped with chains and decorative rings.

It lay in a ditch along with fragments of other statues. The Celtic prince is crowned by a strange headdress. A gold chain was found in the prince's tomb. The stone figure was depicted wearing exactly the same chain, it is likely that the stone warrior prince of Glaub Egg is the exact likeness of a person who lived more than two thousand five hundred years ago; The body in the tomb was found with the same strange headdress as the one that crowns the stone figure. In the following years, aerial archeology has advanced even further, we are leaving the cluster.

In addition to classical aerial archeology, now carried out digitally, we also have other assisted methods. by computer of non-destructive testing to obtain information about archaeological remains and often The most important of these methods is lidar scanning. The scanner is installed on an airplane and examines the landscape below. LIDAR scanning was originally used by surveyors, but for archaeologists the data has proven to be a qualitative leap in knowledge, even if LIDAR terrain models seem somewhat unspectacular at first glance, making LIDAR scanning Just as valuable is the method's ability to remove tree and vegetation noise from the data.

Levin knows that diluted ground-penetrating radar fires electromagnetic pulses at Earth from airplanes and sometimes helicopters. These signals are reflected from any underground structure and the difference in laser return times makes it possible to create a 3D image of the terrain. It also works in the forest because enough laser light can penetrate through the trees so that we can achieve a relatively accurate surface image even in the forest in this image you can follow the course of the Roman Lemus the border between the Roman Empire and the regions unoccupied this here may have been a watchtower and here in the woods the remains of a field of burial mounds this here could theoretically be a burial mound that was opened in the past, I suppose it would be sometime in the 18th century, in the time when people normally entered from above, we call it funnel, so they dug a funnel in the mound to extract funerary objects or skeletons and what was left was these small holes at the top of the mound these faint traces indicate that that is what happened here happens axial Lucian discovered a large mound very close to the tomb of the Celtic Prince a small dot in the scanner image not visible like a tomb in the middle of the thick forest multiple layers of our past lie beneath the ground we walk on we simply cannot see it digital archeology makes the invisible visible in Ireland the number of monuments discovered has multiplied by a hundred with the use of

modern

prospecting methods one particularly spectacular An example is the Hill of Tara, the mysterious national treasure, was the headquarters of Irish kings and pagan priests at the height of their power.

The Hill of Tara exudes an air of magic in Ireland back in the 19th century, the Irish would gather here and swear a saint. They swore not to rest until the land had gained its independence and there was a reason they did so here today the self-proclaimed druids inhabit the area at night they can be heard playing their harps The Christians built a church here Ruth posing and Roseann systematically shooting Striding across the grassland on the sprawling plateau with your magnetometer here on Terra it's a safe bet that you'll find something interesting and you do. The digital data shows numerous circles beneath the surface burial mounds or perhaps gathering places when We started to investigate tired, there were about twenty-five known monuments, these monuments are visible, but through a geophysical study we know that there are more than a hundred monuments, many of which cannot be seen on the surface, they are buried below the surface .

Old maps can provide clues to disappearing structures. The people of Terah lived thousands of years before the invention of writing, recording their history in the ground and creating sacred landscapes that just need to be deciphered. A deep channel in the plateau was probably once a processional route, it is clearly visible on the lidar scan. It leads directly to the inner sanctuary Ratner II, a large complex of circular walls, in fact it is a processional path and it is believed that this is the route that the king-elect would take on his way to the top of the hill of Tara that will be inaugurated at the left. and to the right of the processional route, walls were built to direct the march as a look towards the key monuments.

Interestingly, there are a number of gaps along the banks in which you can see very important monuments and, in particular, burrow amendments, so it seems that the prehistoric builders knew all about visual effects, but they also show infinite. What I personally find particularly attractive is that from up here it offers a wide view of the landscape surrounding the city and there are similar monuments on many of these mountains and hilltops that are not in the We found a great abundance on Otara Hill which is truly unique, but there are also individual monuments that may ultimately have a common point of reference.

Ward's Hill is another site that houses a mysterious shrine. The Dublin students are digging their way into the hill precisely at defined points according to legend Halloween originated on Ward's Hill a pagan festival of fire on the night of October 31 and in fact the students find a large number of bones animals an indication that people here may have gathered for large celebrations with large amounts of food Irish archaeologist Stephen Davis has examined the hill but could not find anything geomagnetic. He has a simple explanation. One of the problems with using magnetic survey here, which is what we could use, of course, the rest is all of this.

There is an intense fire that you have seen behind you, there is an intense fire, it is very magnetic just because it has burned down, so everything really lights up and you can't see anything at all, so with the resistance to ground in this case , we can See that this big mound behind us here is actually defined by us as a stone wall which is actually what we're digging out now in this case, which is why we dug here. We have dug a small section into the side of this mound with the stone room in the center.

Geoelectric surveys measure soil resistance and create images of underground structures. Only now can researchers identify the various walls and ditches in the complex where rituals were actually held and large bonfires were lit here during the night of October 31. Archaeological clues could confirm it. the theory is that Lehrer Bernie is fine, so the fire in a place before what happened here is falling on itself and this spreads all the way up here, now they have a fire festival here, but there is supposed to be a festival of the fire dating back almost as far as I&A there are many evil references to preachers and druids gathering here and lighting a great fire, but those references would be several hundred years after it had happened, so we always treat them with some skepticism , but we are finding a lot of evidence of fire.

Here, who knows, apart from the tombs and ritual sites, the people who built this complex left only one thing behind: the bodies of their murdered kings, their swampy bodies are on display in the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin, the tombs and their dead are. The only testimony of the first Irish are people who did not have written language as in Tara a processional route can be distinguished in the digital data of Ward's Hill a path that is no longer visible in the meadows the same was true with the Celts cemetery in the ERG globe here has not only reconstructed the tumulus, but also the processional path leading to the hill, it was flanked by deep trenches and was originally much longer, as can be seen from the digital data that a geomagnetic study has revealed the roads Of course, today it is known that the road was bordered by a high wall that was up to 12 meters wide at the base, visitors could only see the mound after turning the corner, researchers believe that the hill was even whitewashed, as The structures were designed here in Ireland.

With images in mind and others aligned astronomically, it is not a path that marks a path from A to B, it is aligned with the southern main lunar stop, an astronomical phenomenon that occurs every 18.6 years, so it was possible to devise units of time without a calendar. keep watch for a longer period of time well, the Alhambra in Granada is your nest there are few other sites in Europe that attract so many tourists each day only 5,000 visitors can enter the castle tickets sell out weeks in advance Keuchel Maya feels privileged to work here kuhlmeier and his team have been working for days at the Palacio del parral the villa that belonged to a sultan, then to an opera singer and then to a German banker from Berlin it was from here that our Tour Fond winner removed the Decorative dome in 1891 was replaced by a poor copy.

It's really a great feeling to be able to get a sense of the original domes that set the aromas. The views through the windows create a completely different experience than standing in a museum and looking out. In a dimly lit room, every detail of the camera is carefully documented with a high-performance scanner that watches the long hauls to hear that one can't help but wonder why Berlin doesn't return the dome to its original home, as archaeologists call it. So. considerations a historical predicament previously gone the dome was brought to Berlin legally there is no doubt about it now it has its own history and that history includes that of its previous owner the German banker who acquired it and brought it to Germany incorporated it into his own villa in that moment by a detour arrived at the Berlin Museum this history belongs to the objects provenance cannot be ignored let's watch me disappear digital reconstruction reveals the long-lost splendor of the Chamber the original dome housed in the Berlin museum has been Integrated In this virtual reality experience, the dome of this chamber was one of the oldest components of the Alhambra, probably carved around 1320, if the dome were still in place here, the tower chamber is too small to house the Alhambra z' 5000 daily visitors, no one would do it.

I have once caught glimpses of Tina in places where the walls are too high for the scanner. Another method is used: photogrammetry. A 3D model is generated using thousands of overlapping photographs. In principle, I think it is a good idea to upload 3D images of these objects on the Internet because then everyone can access them, so feeding the snails on the island scientists are one step ahead. Many scanned objects have already been published on the Internet before the German archaeologists returned home. They take some soil samples. It is a cheap substitute for an excavation that researchers are on. doubt an area dotted with prehistoric burial mounds and medieval farms an electrical cable passes underground through a small medieval settlement geomagnetic data helps archaeologists avoid hitting an electrical cable instead of a medieval ditch that's the big difference today in day on stageideal I already know a lot about the site before starting my excavation and this allows me to plan the excavation very precisely.

In general, the excavation areas are much smaller than they used to be because I simply don't have to search as much as I used to, when archaeologists are drilling. In a place they suspect is home to a waste pit like modern garbage bins, their historical predecessors say a lot about the living conditions of the people who lived here, the team can immediately tell that their technicians have hit the right spot. John Boozman grants well, see what you can. I see very well here is the lowest layer that we still had on the drill head and there is coal in it, so we already know that we are in the middle of the occupation layer, but I can't say I'm surprised because I already knew from geomagnetic data that there is a structure here that we have already been able to classify quite accurately.

If we hadn't found this, it would be an indication that we had messed up our measurements, but it was accurate, huh. We have gathered a lot of information without having to stick our shovel into the ground and what is particularly satisfying is what we found in the core sample, namely charcoal. By radiocarbon dating we will be able to establish the age of this charcoal, which does not mean that we will know the age of the trenches, but this is how we proceed step by step and of course when the botanists examine the charcoal for us we will know what type of trees were burned here.

Soil samples undergo further testing in Frankfurt. Small pieces. Charcoal pieces from the historic waste pit are treated with the same tender love and care as any fragment of ancient pottery. Finally, the soil receives If we have a lot of phosphorus, it is likely to come from human and animal feces, so it is an early indicator of how long this place was populated. settlement used for a short or longer period the greater the impact of phosphorus, the greater will be the probability that the settlement has been used for a long time with its high-tech equipment. Archaeologists have pointed out many places where they could dig, but they don't do it because they dig. destroy traces that promise key insights with future methods not yet developed we take responsibility archeology is a finite field sites do not grow back and things that have been excavated are lost to research unfortunately this is an inherent part of archaeological excavation in Nairobi Suba dissolves it comes in your hand digital archeology is the future of historical research but even today we cannot do everything on a computer we are here in the landscape and we feel what is unique about it we see the Hill of Tara we see the topography we have a holistic idea of ​​the place it is not possible to reproduce that in a virtual world technology provides us with useful tools but archaeologists still have to do field work