Get in touch with technology with text Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hey everyone, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland, and we are going to take another look at archaeology. This is our part two on archaeology and the tools used in the trade. Yes, in the first episode we talked a lot about the history and about carbon dating and some of the other dating methods that exist for um, for you know, when you've got something that you have dug up from the ground, figuring out how old it is, and also some of the hand tools used for digging stuff up out of the ground. Now, that turns out that as technology has advanced, archaeologists have figured out ways of applying that technology in their own field. And we're starting to see some technologies that are developed specifically for archaeological pursuit. There's also a lot of new ways of figuring out where in the ground you want to dig stuff up. Right, So let's go ahead and look at some of the higher text stuff. Now, some of it is again basic equipment that has proved itself to be really useful in lots of disciplines, so why not archaeology. One of those obviously would be cameras. Right, as we talked about in the first episode, you do a lot of documenting the site when you're doing archaeology because it is, by its nature a destructive science. Once you have dug up a site and it's never going to be the same again, So documenting exactly how you found everything is very helpful for the future. Yep, going through every single step of the way. Just like as you were saying before, Lauren, with a with a crime scene where forensics have to come in and document everything. It's very much the same sort of principle here, except of course we're not looking at a crime. We're looking at the evidence of a human settlement at some point in the past, and maybe an ancient crime, but not really in the same way. Right, it could be some fashion crimes. I'm sure there were several of those. It would be the ancient version of me pretty much. So. Yeah, Cameras would be things like you know, film cameras, digital cameras, and not just cameras that take the kind of images that we usually take. There's also cameras that might take images that are infrared. Now, obviously the version that we see would not be an infrared because we wouldn't be able to see it, but it would be using infred spectrum scaled into into visible spectrum, which that could pick up stuff that otherwise we might not see, you know, just with the way that our eyes work, you know, within the visible spectrum, which is why you would use it. Yeah, that's going to be an important part of one of our later notes. Um. But also in the kind of relatively basic technology section, we've got robots. Yeah. In fact, the robots thing is really getting exciting because we've got a couple of different options here. You know, you've got your your robots that obviously you want to send a robot in whenever it's going to be really difficult to get people there, or really dangerous to get people there if you aren't really sure if the environment is a safe one. Obviously, losing a hundred thous and dollar robot is a small price to pay compared to putting someone's life in danger. Oh sure, or in the kind of tight spaces that humans literally cannot get into. Yeah, right, so if it could, it might be that perhaps there was a natural disaster that has uh sealed off something that once was open, and then you know, we can't get in there easily now, But a robot could also if it's in an area that we can't access because there are no more roads that lead up there. Perhaps there were roads once upon a time, but they have been overgrown and they're they're gone now. Other types of robots that people might use are are the actual like quad copter, six rotor eight rod, you know, things with cameras on them. So yeah, and and all of these also have the benefit of being i mean, you know, humans are you know, a hundred to three hundred pounds or so, and robots canna have a much smaller footprint and cause a lot less damage to a to a surrounding area. So both of those devices are used pretty pretty extensively. Obviously, one of the most import and pieces of equipment in an archaeological dig today would be a computer because, as it turns out now that as our tools have become more sophisticated, we've been able to extract a lot more information about the archaeological digs we do. Right, So with that information comes a need to be able to analyze it and synthesize it and store it and and cross reference and i mean, even for the basic kinds of information that we were coming up with a few hundred years ago. A computer in order to crunch those numbers and kind of compare things and try to pull similarities and patterns out of the data would have been very useful. Sure. And if you want to do something even along the lines of using a computer to perhaps construct a virtual representation of the site that you're looking at, something so that you can kind of see what it may have looked like back when it was, you know, an actual existing human settlement, obviously a computer be really important. So if you if you have you know, basic uh information and like the layout of the settlement, you know, you've determined where the structures were and what the perimeter was of this place, you might be able to reconstruct that virtually, which would be an invaluable tool, and not just for the purposes of that dig but for scholarship further down the line. And we've already seen some people kind of play with this in different ways. Some ways it's it's a little bit uh, you know, I hesitate to use the word easier, but a little less there's less work required on an archaeological side of things. For example, there have been people who have created the Google Earth models of ancient Rome. So a lot of those, uh, those examples of ancient architecture are still in Rome. Uh in ruins forms of ruins. But but you can still see some of it, and so that makes it a little bit easier than say a settlement that is currently you know, three ft under sand in Egypt. Yes, yes, but um, but with with both of the those examples. Aren't there some virtual reality kind of applications that are coming into use these Yeah, there actually are. There's a project specifically called Virtual Environments for Research in Archaeology. This was one that I saw on a British journal website which is all about using virtual reality to build on our understanding of archaeological finds. So again, uh, it's it's really to create that full picture literally in this case, a virtual picture of an environment, so that we can have a closer connection to our ancestors and really understand the progress that that humanity has gone through. To walk through one of these towns, yeah, you could, you could in theory, assuming that your data is good enough, you could in theory have a pretty immersive experience. I mean, I can even imagine a world where some educational organization takes it upon themselves to make a truly kind of immersive experience where it's like a virtual tour of these ancient landscapes, and then using something like the Oculus rift so that you can get sort of a first person perspective of what it would have been like to move around in such an environment. Now, if you think of that as an educational tool that you put in high schools where you're no longer just reading about these ancient civilizations, but you can actually look around and see what it would have looked like. Like I remember reading in art history and in other history courses about the ancient Roman structures, but until I visited Rome, I really had no concept of the scale of these sort of things. Sure, and you know, and I mean even those those little kind of kind of probably slightly terrible water color drawings in my early history books were always my favorite parts, just getting to see like, oh, that's what that was like, but of course that's not what that was really like. So Yeah, these computers obviously very important, not just I mean, the virtual environment stuff is really cool. That's a kind of the sexy side of the computers. The ones that are actually used in the field might not be nearly that sophisticated. They're probably a lot more like Excel spreadsheet kind of. Yeah, it's about dat collection and storage and then eventually analysis. But they are obviously very important tools. Some other important tools. Let's get to some surveying equipment. And this is probably my favorite device on the whole list because it, uh it made me think like it it slipped out of a Terry Pratchett Discworld novel or something. But the audolite, that's how you say it. I was going to wait and let you had to watch a video first. In fact, here's the secret here. Originally I watched the video just so I can figure out how to say the autolite properly instead of saying it like theo delight or something. Uh. So I it was. It was an English video, as in British English, uh. And it was actually describing how to set up a theodolite for students, so students of archaeology and uh, not just archaeology. It's actually used in a few different disciplines, but how students could set one up properly so that they could learn how to take the right kind of measurements. And these measurements, by the way, which we have not said yet are our angles in both horizontal in vertical planes as I understand it, but I've got a very poor concept how this is laid out. What does it do? All right? So let's say that you you establish your base point. This is the point where you're setting up the theodolite. You actually have to be really really precise with this. In other words, the best thing to do is to set up something directly underneath the theodolite, which is on a tripod. Okay, so it's the theodolite itself is kind of like a telescope. It's suspended above this point that you have established. Um. It actually has a lens that points straight down so that you can, uh, you can maneuver it so that it's directly above your point of reference. Now, this point of reference is a is a a point that you know all the stuff about, Like you know exactly where this is in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps you have the global positioning units for it, so you know exactly where this place is. Now you've got at least two other points that you want to compare to each other that are off in the distance. All right, So the way this would work is you would focus in on one of those two points, take some measure your mints, focus on the second of the two points, take some measurements, compare the two and then you know more about the relationship of those two points in the distance to each other as well as to you. So theodolite is really important to do things like measure. Well, mostly it's the angles, but a lot of theodolites now also have range finders on them, which we'll talk about in a second. But the idea is to really establish where things are in relation to each other when you're trying to figure out a full excavation site. So you might say, let's say that the main temple of an ancient city was in this one part and the house of the the ruler is in this other part, and by that you're starting to establish relationships culturally, not just archaeologically, not just you know, architecturally or anything like that, but you're you're starting to draw some other social and cultural implications from this information. This is what the theodolite helps you do. It gets that quantifiable data that you can use to start building on this other stuff that might be more humanity related as opposed to scientifically related. So, uh, it allows you to look at the horizontal or vertical plane, meaning that you can tell angles from left to right or up and down. So not everything is built on a perfectly flat level surface, right, and archaeological digs are frequently you know, on on various steps and levels down into the ground. Yeah, yeah, you might have. You might have houses that were on hills that are on the sides of areas that you know, or or that the ground has shifted in the intervening years. And so the theodolite allows you to have very precise measurements of where these different points of reference are in relation to each other. And uh, the I'll try and link. I'll make sure I link a video when we maybe a little after this podcast goes out, because I think I'm gonna be gone while it does come out. I'll be at c E S. But I'll link some videos that show a theodolite being used and explaining why it's being used the way it is now. The older theodolites had these glass plates on them that actually had the markings on them. So one glass plate, for example, would have markings from zero to three sixty marking the degrees of the circle right, and a second glass plate would essentially just have an arrow on it, and since they're both clear, you can see where the arrow is in relation to the diet. Well. Yeah, so you just had to align them and then manually take down measurements. I assume that the new models are digital, and we'll do that for you exactly. So people who are using a very modern theodolite might not have to be quite as I mean, you still have to be very careful the way you set it up, but you might not have to be quite as careful in the use of it in these older ones. I was watching this and it was interesting. It was so intricate. I mean, it looks like a telescope that simply can pivot up and down and left and right. That's all it looked like just at first glance. But then when you see all the individual parts that turn relative to each other so that you can actually take down these measurements, it's pretty phenomenal how complex it is at any rate. And eventually it's just so that you can figure out angles, Like it's like, wow, this is a really complicated thing just to figure out the angles. But it is very important to establish the relationship of these different structures within an excavation site. Moving on, we I mentioned range finders and electronic distance meter as an example, which uses some form of electromagnetic signal to establish how far away a reference point is from the device itself. So you can even have handheld versions of this where this is something that sends out a signal and then UH counts. It counts the time that it takes for a signal bounds back right, and because we know how fast the signal travels, that means you can determine how far away that object is. Another very similar piece of technology of this is the light are sometimes called a laser range finder YEP. Light detection and ranging UH usually is using pulses of laser light. It's not always laser, but more frequently than not it is, and so it's using these very short pulses of laser light to shoot out at whatever the reference area is, you know, whatever you're aiming at. It hits, that bounces back, comes back. Same sort of thing as the electronic distance meter. It finds the distance based upon the time it took for the light to leave the device and reflect off of the object and hit the receiver return senor so once you've done that, then you can actually say, oh, so this is that far away. And obviously again to establish what the parameters are for any site, this sort of stuff is really important. Yeah, and then those those uh, infrared, microwave or or ultrasound devices could possibly be used for stuff that's that's underground it's filled in, like in the case of vesuvious. Sure, yeah, you can actually have electromagnetic radiation that will penetrate the ground and reflect off of stuff, and it really works well if you have a uniform type of soil, like if there's a lot of different stuff in the soil, then you can get some corrupted readings. You know, you might too much static. Yeah, it's like it's like if you went into a um, you know, a beach, and you're using a metal detector and you're looking for some sort of coins there, but someone has thoughtfully gone in there and dropped a whole bunch of just worthless chunks. Yeah, yeah, something that the mel detector would pick up but would be totally worthless. And yeah, you'd be detecting lots of stuff, but none of it would be valuable. Same sort of thing with this stuff. If the ground is not in uniform uh kind of consistency, thank you, then you could have some real problems. And of course ledar won't penetrate the ground at all. It's it's light based, so it'll just reflect right back off. But these other ones like you mentioned totally would work and in fact do work. But still all of these are very useful for um, for collecting that precise data that is going to help out research down the line. As you are systematically destroying your excavation site right now. These approaches right here are a little less uh destructive than saying too. But obviously it would be really important when you want to do something like build that virtual environment we talked about earlier. You have to have all these facts and figures to do that. Yeah, and and before I mean, once you've got this this data set down, you can feel a little bit more comfortable going in and kind of must mucking stuff up knowing that you've already got the original locations of everything laid out. It's never gonna be the way it was back in the day, folks, we just have to resolve ourselves to that. Um. I think, isn't that the good thing about technology? Well, I'm just saying the archaeological site itself is never going to be perceived. So once we've established what what what what it was before we started getting really down and dirty, I think we're all right. You know, there's there's this one part of me who's like, we shouldn't disturb that because that's historically important. But I think, well, then if we don't disturb it, we don't learn any We don't learn anything. And I think as long as you're you're not running around chatting it belongs in a museum, then you know, basically, I'm gonna have to really think on this, Lauren, I'm gonna have to really take this into consideration. So I think in order for me to really have the time to think about this deeply, we need to take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Okay, we're back, and uh, for those of you who are wondering what my conclusion was, uh yeah, let's just rip it all up. Let's just rip it all up. Okay, So moving on. Now, we've talked about surveying equipment, Let's talk about geophysical equipment, which in some ways is similar, but there are other means of making sure that the place that you're you're exploring does in fact have some sort of archaeological significance. And one of the first things that we can talk about our resistivity meters, checking the resistance, the electrical resistance of an area, and you might first thing like, wow, that's kind of weird. You're checking to see you know, isn't the ground ground like, isn't it non conductive? And therefore you don't it doesn't help at all. No, Well, I mean that that sounds kind of like a really fancy metal detector. It kind of is, it kind of is. So the idea is that you're you're measuring for the electrical potential between an inner pair and an outer pair of electrodes or multiple electrodes that are across a region. Okay, so they're all kind of um testing to see what the conductivity of that particular area happens to be. So, if there is conductive material, then by measuring that resistance, you can determine, oh, there's something organic here, or perhaps there's something metal here that could indicate a human settlement was once here. If you start to detect less or more resistance and less conductivity, that's an indication that there could be something that's blocking the signal. That could be like a stone wall. So if now, if it's exactly what it should be based upon your knowledge of the soil in the area, that's an indication that there's nothing there and that maybe you don't need to waste your time dagging down there, that maybe you need to move a hundred feet off to the right or something. So there, you know, it's really to kind of establish what is a good place to to actually say this is where the excavation site is going to be. So uh, it is sort of like a male detector. There's another one called the electro magnetic conductivity instrument, which is essentially creating an electric current in ascending coil. So we've talked about this so many times, Lauren. The idea of an electric current running through uh, like especially an alternating electric current, creates a magnetic field, like a fluctuating magnetic field, and magnetic fields when uh fluctuating, if they're near a conductor, will induce electricity to flow. So that's the general idea. You've got this this probe that starts an electric current that allows this magnetic field to affect anything that's conductive in the area. So if there's something conductive in the soil, it'll start to have an electric charge run through it. And so by trying to by using an instrument the detects an electric charge. You can therefore determine whether or not there's something of interest down the soil. Right, So that's why this thing is has got a sending coil and a receiving coil. The receiving coil is to detect any of that other electric charge that might be happening in the regions. So it's an interesting approach. It's not as precise as the resistivity meters, but it is another kind of approach to similar to that of a metal detector um. In fact, I'll go ahead and mention mele detectors. We've talked about those before. I think we did a full episode of mele detectors, if I'm not mistaken. I don't think that we did personally, but perhaps you encristed could have been. It might be. It might be you know, you look like a librarian law and I'm sorry, it's just you know. Anyway, So male detectors use electromagnetic induction. So that's again a way of detecting con the materials. In fact, there are male detectors. They're so sensitive they can distinguish between different types of conductive metals. So you would be able to tell right away using a male detector, assuming it's the right type. I mean, not all male detectors are created equally, but assuming it's the right type, you would be able to tell very quickly what type of metal you are detecting. And if it's a type that you weren't expecting to find, that could mean lots of different things. It could mean that the site has been corrupted, it could mean that there's some other geological thing going on that is giving you false readings, all right, because any of these um electromagnetic devices could probably be thrown off by by wiggins in the area. Oh yeah, if you've got something that's really magnetic in the area, that could definitely throw things off, you know. Or if you've got a lot of just natural um metal deposits like ores or whatever, that could also throw things off. So, uh, you know, knowing knowing geological facts about the area you're excavating would be really important because you would know the odds of running into that type of stuff, So that would at least reduce the chance of a false positive if you already know what does and doesn't exist in that area. Typically, I mean they're always weird cases where you're like, wow, no one knew that the world's giant natural magnet was directly underneath where we thought there was gonna be a lost city, but it could just be a copper deposit. I mean, you know. So, Um okay. And the last, the last electro magnetic device on our list, um is one, the pronunciation of which you have proclaimed to be very excited about. Yeah. I proclaimed it because I realized that I didn't know what it was. It's magnetometer, so not a magnetometer. No, I wanted it to be magnetometer so badly. This is where I'm sad that I was. I was determined not to show my ignorance. So it's a magnetometer. I wanted it to be a magnetometer, and I wanted it to be a magnetometer in your heart. Yes, it's the leader of the brotherhood of this was that the evil brotherhood of mutants meter? No, it's the magnetometer, and it's a sensor that measures magnetic fields. So again, very similar. We're talking about a lot of electronic electromagnetic forces here, but they're all basically looking for similar things, just in different ways, right, So electrical resistance versus electrical current versus a magnetic field. Again, you're looking to see if there's anything that's creating small fluctuations. Now, the Earth's magnetic field is pretty predictable, but there's stuff that makes the earth magnetic field in very small regions fluctuate in subtle ways. So these meters are actually able to detect those subtle fluctuations and be able to tell you, hey, there's something here that is interrupting what would normally be the reading you would expect to find here, which again could indicate that there's something that was made by humans that's present there. Again, natural deposits could throw that off, so it may it's possible that the readings you get are actually you know, maybe you're gonna strike it rich because you just realized you found a vein of ore that's incredibly valuable, but it's not. You might be crying ing all the way to the bank, but no, it's it's generally used to try and find stuff that that humans have made, artifacts that would disrupt that magnetic field one way or the other. And even stuff that you don't think typically as being magnetic can affect a magnetic field. So that's why it's important. And then you have to have a really sensitive one to detect those small fluctuations. Right, it's not just like Ferris iron ore or anything like that. It's not just a needle that goes from zero to something's magnetic. You know it's gonna it's gonna be really precise. Uh. Then you've got a couple of other things. Ground penetrating radar GPR. This is an electromagnetic pulse, once again getting into the electromagnets, it gets sent into the ground. Stuff in the ground reflects the pulse back to the device, which the receiver will pick up on once it comes back to the device. And so the amount of time it took for a pulse to return to the receiver indicates the depth of the artifacts and for it to work best, you definitely don't want to have a lot of conductive material in it, or you're gonna get some corrupted data coming back. Okay, So so I missed that one on our on our list of electromagnetic devices, But that's okay, yeah, because in this case, it's more about it's like echolocation. It's more like that than as opposed to detecting a charge or detecting a magnetic field. This is more like specifically for for for metals. So yeah, you're just looking to see is there something that you wouldn't expect to be down there? And again this works really well on uniform soil because if there are a lot of big rocks in the area, that's going to reflect those signals back and give you false readings and then you might dig and you're like, wow, this rock I'm sure has incredible historical significance in some context, just not in archaeology. Uh. And then the other big one of course being Global Positioning Systems GPS, so that you can determine specific coordinates for the excavation site. This is obviously really useful so that you can have a planned visit. You know, it's not Archaeologists aren't the kind of people who just pack up in a suit, you know, a backpack and just wander out into the wilderness and then hope they find something and then stay and then stay there forever until it's done. Like they'll they'll do surveys and they'll do uh, they'll do some exploratory searches, and they'll they'll look at some other data we're gonna talk about in just a second. But they don't necessarily just you know, throw a dart at a map and say let's go there and then stay there. They usually will visit a site, establish some camp. Perhaps they'll just write down what the coordinates are, then return to get more material so they can do a full excavation. Sure also once they're there, measurements can be taken throughout the process of a dig to help to help figure out or to help note for the record for for future research exactly where objects were positioned from from above and from the sides. Right, This has definitely become more useful ever since UH GPS has has been well, the precision of GPS has increased over years. Part of that was an artificial leap, right because the the military. Originally the GPS was kind of um pioneered by the U. S. Navy, I believe, and UH and and they originally put kind of a cap on how precise it was going to be for for consumer end users, right, because they didn't want consumers to be able Specifically, they didn't want other states, other states being able to determine where things like military installations were with precision. I mean that would be terrible to give us potential enemies a direct line of of you know, site essentially from a satellite point of view of where your stuff was. But now that's all been lifted. So that's why you are able to use a GPS device in your car and be able to get precise directions as opposed to somewhere in the next three feet there will be a turn either to the left or the right. Take it less useful, Yeah, not as useful, more philosophical. So yeah, that brings us into satellites. So beyond just GPS, satellites have become really important in archaeology because they have unveiled potential excavation sites that people had just not ever been able to see in the in the you know, honestly, we've got we've got stuff. In Egypt is a great example right there. There are sites in Egypt that are covered in sand that have been for thousands upon thousands of years, and they're they're really remote, so it's not like it's a place that someone could have accidentally fallen upon it just because they have to be going from point A to point B, which totally happens. You know, kids playing under trees, for example, have led to major archeological finds. Yeah yeah, but in some cases they're just miles away from anything else of modern society, and so satellites started to pick up on things that archaeologists have found very useful. They will go back and review satellite imagery, especially if they have a general idea of where a site might be, like within let's say, given a hundred square mile range, that's a huge range to cover on foot, but on satellite that's pretty simple to take a look at then, so you might pour over. You could spend hundreds of hours looking at this stuff trying to find any sort of patterns or examples of something that could indicate an old settlement is there. Um and and also non visible spectrum ranges at the thermal infrared in in particular, I think can be really instrumental in determining where wear sites like this might be. Yeah. Yeah. There have been lots of examples of using infrared imaging to see the different densities of sand in an area, or even soil. I mean it's not I say sand because it's easy to imagine when you think of Egypt, but this this applies to spaces all of of the world. But if you are able to see that there are different densities, that suggests that there could be something that's buried underneath the surface which could require a closer look. And in some cases, I've seen pictures of archaeologists who are able to take UH an infrared image and then map out what looks to be a full human settlement, like a city. In fact, that an old capital of Egypt called Tennis was discovered this way, Yeah, well it was. It was further explored UM and Tannis is one of the ones that was made famous by Indiana Jones and The Raiders of the Lost Dark UM. But UH. In two thousand eleven, a University of Alabama archaeologist named Sarah Parrock and her team used used this imaging UM from NASA and commercial satellites to discover like seventeen pyramids, over a thousand tombs, and over three thousand ancient settlements in Egypt. That's pretty incredible, I mean, being able to discover this stuff. And as I understand, you saw a video of her talking about this, right, Yeah, she has a really cool ted talk about it. Really short one actually a good five minutes sort of thing, so we'll try to remember to link that out on social in this episode. Airs. Yeah, I read a great article that had some quotes from her and and her work. I think she actually I think the direct quote she had in the article was Indiana Jones eat your heart out, got some great attitude in it, and and yeah, the the technique has been used all over the place. Um. You know, it was also used in check O Canyon in New Mexico to discover a whole roadway system that was linear and built through topographic obstructions and twenty ft wide and ranged over two hundred miles UM, all by a people that were pretty sure didn't use animals for manual labor. Yes, so this was all human made. Like human humans dragged the equipment needed to construct this stuff for the entire length and breadth of it. That's pretty incredible, And there's possibility that we never would have known about any of that without this technique. And also, satellites are being used to help protect archaeological sites, so one of the big problems this brings us back to the top of our lap of our first episode in archaeology, you know, we talked about how archaeology essentially started out as tomb rating. Uh, well, tomb rating is still a thing. I mean you still you know, the market for antiquities is just as as alive today as it was back in the day when all the rich people in Europe said, hey, I want that stuff. It's more of a black market now because most of these are are preserved historical sites. But right, so, you you do have some people who in some eyes what you could call enterprising, and others you could call uh, you know, destructive because they are going into these historical sites and removing stuff. Um, but how do you protect everything? I mean, it turns out there are a lot of archaeological sites out there and you can't be everywhere at once. Well, archaeologists are starting to use satellites to try and gather data. Some of these satellites are gathering data on a daily basis, and they can review it and see if there are any new pits that are opening up that indicate that someone's rating something, and then they can alert the respect of countries authorities, and most of these countries have very strict rules about who can and can't go into these sites, so they can send security out to to check in on those places and cut down on looting. That this can even be you know, well meaning explorers who don't understand that that you know, you know, they're they're thinking, oh, I'm an amateur archaeologist and don't realize that by being an amateur, what they might be doing is is destroying important artifacts or even best case scenario, contaminating them because they're getting their grubby carbon all over everything. Yeah. Yeah, keeping carbon hands off me, you darn carbon ape. Also a sad note about about infrared spectrum kind of stuff. Um okay, so, so have you ever heard of the pigment Egyptian blue. I have heard it before, but I didn't know anything about it until you had done this research. It is, in fact the oldest known artificial pigment in the world, and it happens to reflect infrared light when a red light is shown on it. Okay, um so, And and that's even when over the course of like you know, some four thousand, five hundred years have passed, um and the paint has been reduced to like nano sheets. So the layer of paint is a billionth of a meter thick. Yes, it is. It is practically not there anymore, but just there enough to to like like a single layer of paint molecules. Okay, um, And and this this property UM, which is technically the property of calcium copper tetra silicate, which gives the pigment its color. UM has been used to both identify artifacts in the in the field and is being investigated by u g A Chemists, University of Georgia's shout out, hey that's my alma mater. Yeah dogs Um. It's being investigated for use in other applications like like medical imaging or security inc or l eds and optical fibers. I can see this being really useful for identifying a real artifact versus a fake one. If you were to shine the red light and and you've got no in for red back, then that's an indication that, no, this is not the real real You could argue that perhaps whatever the paint is has worn off to the point where there's nothing left except for that nanometer thing. Yeah, that would require you to actually scrub down to the point where you're losing artifact anyway, And I don't think that the color would be there for you to see if you I mean I think would essentially not be there anymore. So interesting. Yeah, all right, well we have wrapped up our discussion about archaeology and technology. There are other tools that we didn't really touch on that get much more niche oriented depending upon what the field is. Absolutely in, archaeology is a completely huge field. I honestly, every time we start researching for an episode, I'm like, oh, this will be a really fun episode. It will be so neat and tidy, and oh this is huge. Um. I mean this was not originally a two parter when we first envisioned it. Uh No, we could. We could probably plea go on for many episodes about many of the very specific technologies that different fields of archaeology are using. Sure, and and in fact, we have done some episodes about either specific technology we've mentioned already or related technologies. Obviously, the electromagnetic effect is one of those things we've talked about multiple times. So if you're interested in this kind of stuff, definitely look into it. I mean, especially if you're like a student and you have never really considered archaeology. That might be an interesting class to take when you're a freshman and you're just wanting to kind of explore and find out what really does spark your interests, because personally, I find the stuff to be cool, even if it means I'm not wearing a fedora and carrying a whip. I'm pretty sure you would allow be allowed to at least wear fedora in the field if you really wanted to. Yeah, probably be mocked relentlessly, but how is that any different from podcasting. So also, if you maybe if you would like us to do a little bit of that homework for you, um, write us in and let us know if if there's a specific topic that you want to hear more about. There was something we mentioned where you thought, you know, that was really interesting, but I really wanted you to go in more depth into that thing. Let us know, because we're more than happy to look into it and really dive in. If that's what you guys are interested in, or if there's just something else you want to say. Maybe you just want to say, hey, Lauren Jonathan, good job. You know you respond well to praise, So write us, send us an email. Our address is tech Stuff at Discovery dot com, or drop us a line on social media. We are on Twitter, Tumbler, and Facebook. Our handle is tech stuff hs W and Lauren and I will talk to you again really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it, how staff works dot com

Get in touch with technology with text Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hey everyone, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland, and we are going to take another look at archaeology. This is our part two on archaeology and the tools used in the trade. Yes, in the first episode we talked a lot about the history and about carbon dating and some of the other dating methods that exist for um, for you know, when you've got something that you have dug up from the ground, figuring out how old it is, and also some of the hand tools used for digging stuff up out of the ground. Now, that turns out that as technology has advanced, archaeologists have figured out ways of applying that technology in their own field. And we're starting to see some technologies that are developed specifically for archaeological pursuit. There's also a lot of new ways of figuring out where in the ground you want to dig stuff up. Right, So let's go ahead and look at some of the higher text stuff. Now, some of it is again basic equipment that has proved itself to be really useful in lots of disciplines, so why not archaeology. One of those obviously would be cameras. Right, as we talked about in the first episode, you do a lot of documenting the site when you're doing archaeology because it is, by its nature a destructive science. Once you have dug up a site and it's never going to be the same again, So documenting exactly how you found everything is very helpful for the future. Yep, going through every single step of the way. Just like as you were saying before, Lauren, with a with a crime scene where forensics have to come in and document everything. It's very much the same sort of principle here, except of course we're not looking at a crime. We're looking at the evidence of a human settlement at some point in the past, and maybe an ancient crime, but not really in the same way. Right, it could be some fashion crimes. I'm sure there were several of those. It would be the ancient version of me pretty much. So. Yeah, Cameras would be things like you know, film cameras, digital cameras, and not just cameras that take the kind of images that we usually take. There's also cameras that might take images that are infrared. Now, obviously the version that we see would not be an infrared because we wouldn't be able to see it, but it would be using infred spectrum scaled into into visible spectrum, which that could pick up stuff that otherwise we might not see, you know, just with the way that our eyes work, you know, within the visible spectrum, which is why you would use it. Yeah, that's going to be an important part of one of our later notes. Um. But also in the kind of relatively basic technology section, we've got robots. Yeah. In fact, the robots thing is really getting exciting because we've got a couple of different options here. You know, you've got your your robots that obviously you want to send a robot in whenever it's going to be really difficult to get people there, or really dangerous to get people there if you aren't really sure if the environment is a safe one. Obviously, losing a hundred thous and dollar robot is a small price to pay compared to putting someone's life in danger. Oh sure, or in the kind of tight spaces that humans literally cannot get into. Yeah, right, so if it could, it might be that perhaps there was a natural disaster that has uh sealed off something that once was open, and then you know, we can't get in there easily now, But a robot could also if it's in an area that we can't access because there are no more roads that lead up there. Perhaps there were roads once upon a time, but they have been overgrown and they're they're gone now. Other types of robots that people might use are are the actual like quad copter, six rotor eight rod, you know, things with cameras on them. So yeah, and and all of these also have the benefit of being i mean, you know, humans are you know, a hundred to three hundred pounds or so, and robots canna have a much smaller footprint and cause a lot less damage to a to a surrounding area. So both of those devices are used pretty pretty extensively. Obviously, one of the most import and pieces of equipment in an archaeological dig today would be a computer because, as it turns out now that as our tools have become more sophisticated, we've been able to extract a lot more information about the archaeological digs we do. Right, So with that information comes a need to be able to analyze it and synthesize it and store it and and cross reference and i mean, even for the basic kinds of information that we were coming up with a few hundred years ago. A computer in order to crunch those numbers and kind of compare things and try to pull similarities and patterns out of the data would have been very useful. Sure. And if you want to do something even along the lines of using a computer to perhaps construct a virtual representation of the site that you're looking at, something so that you can kind of see what it may have looked like back when it was, you know, an actual existing human settlement, obviously a computer be really important. So if you if you have you know, basic uh information and like the layout of the settlement, you know, you've determined where the structures were and what the perimeter was of this place, you might be able to reconstruct that virtually, which would be an invaluable tool, and not just for the purposes of that dig but for scholarship further down the line. And we've already seen some people kind of play with this in different ways. Some ways it's it's a little bit uh, you know, I hesitate to use the word easier, but a little less there's less work required on an archaeological side of things. For example, there have been people who have created the Google Earth models of ancient Rome. So a lot of those, uh, those examples of ancient architecture are still in Rome. Uh in ruins forms of ruins. But but you can still see some of it, and so that makes it a little bit easier than say a settlement that is currently you know, three ft under sand in Egypt. Yes, yes, but um, but with with both of the those examples. Aren't there some virtual reality kind of applications that are coming into use these Yeah, there actually are. There's a project specifically called Virtual Environments for Research in Archaeology. This was one that I saw on a British journal website which is all about using virtual reality to build on our understanding of archaeological finds. So again, uh, it's it's really to create that full picture literally in this case, a virtual picture of an environment, so that we can have a closer connection to our ancestors and really understand the progress that that humanity has gone through. To walk through one of these towns, yeah, you could, you could in theory, assuming that your data is good enough, you could in theory have a pretty immersive experience. I mean, I can even imagine a world where some educational organization takes it upon themselves to make a truly kind of immersive experience where it's like a virtual tour of these ancient landscapes, and then using something like the Oculus rift so that you can get sort of a first person perspective of what it would have been like to move around in such an environment. Now, if you think of that as an educational tool that you put in high schools where you're no longer just reading about these ancient civilizations, but you can actually look around and see what it would have looked like. Like I remember reading in art history and in other history courses about the ancient Roman structures, but until I visited Rome, I really had no concept of the scale of these sort of things. Sure, and you know, and I mean even those those little kind of kind of probably slightly terrible water color drawings in my early history books were always my favorite parts, just getting to see like, oh, that's what that was like, but of course that's not what that was really like. So Yeah, these computers obviously very important, not just I mean, the virtual environment stuff is really cool. That's a kind of the sexy side of the computers. The ones that are actually used in the field might not be nearly that sophisticated. They're probably a lot more like Excel spreadsheet kind of. Yeah, it's about dat collection and storage and then eventually analysis. But they are obviously very important tools. Some other important tools. Let's get to some surveying equipment. And this is probably my favorite device on the whole list because it, uh it made me think like it it slipped out of a Terry Pratchett Discworld novel or something. But the audolite, that's how you say it. I was going to wait and let you had to watch a video first. In fact, here's the secret here. Originally I watched the video just so I can figure out how to say the autolite properly instead of saying it like theo delight or something. Uh. So I it was. It was an English video, as in British English, uh. And it was actually describing how to set up a theodolite for students, so students of archaeology and uh, not just archaeology. It's actually used in a few different disciplines, but how students could set one up properly so that they could learn how to take the right kind of measurements. And these measurements, by the way, which we have not said yet are our angles in both horizontal in vertical planes as I understand it, but I've got a very poor concept how this is laid out. What does it do? All right? So let's say that you you establish your base point. This is the point where you're setting up the theodolite. You actually have to be really really precise with this. In other words, the best thing to do is to set up something directly underneath the theodolite, which is on a tripod. Okay, so it's the theodolite itself is kind of like a telescope. It's suspended above this point that you have established. Um. It actually has a lens that points straight down so that you can, uh, you can maneuver it so that it's directly above your point of reference. Now, this point of reference is a is a a point that you know all the stuff about, Like you know exactly where this is in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps you have the global positioning units for it, so you know exactly where this place is. Now you've got at least two other points that you want to compare to each other that are off in the distance. All right, So the way this would work is you would focus in on one of those two points, take some measure your mints, focus on the second of the two points, take some measurements, compare the two and then you know more about the relationship of those two points in the distance to each other as well as to you. So theodolite is really important to do things like measure. Well, mostly it's the angles, but a lot of theodolites now also have range finders on them, which we'll talk about in a second. But the idea is to really establish where things are in relation to each other when you're trying to figure out a full excavation site. So you might say, let's say that the main temple of an ancient city was in this one part and the house of the the ruler is in this other part, and by that you're starting to establish relationships culturally, not just archaeologically, not just you know, architecturally or anything like that, but you're you're starting to draw some other social and cultural implications from this information. This is what the theodolite helps you do. It gets that quantifiable data that you can use to start building on this other stuff that might be more humanity related as opposed to scientifically related. So, uh, it allows you to look at the horizontal or vertical plane, meaning that you can tell angles from left to right or up and down. So not everything is built on a perfectly flat level surface, right, and archaeological digs are frequently you know, on on various steps and levels down into the ground. Yeah, yeah, you might have. You might have houses that were on hills that are on the sides of areas that you know, or or that the ground has shifted in the intervening years. And so the theodolite allows you to have very precise measurements of where these different points of reference are in relation to each other. And uh, the I'll try and link. I'll make sure I link a video when we maybe a little after this podcast goes out, because I think I'm gonna be gone while it does come out. I'll be at c E S. But I'll link some videos that show a theodolite being used and explaining why it's being used the way it is now. The older theodolites had these glass plates on them that actually had the markings on them. So one glass plate, for example, would have markings from zero to three sixty marking the degrees of the circle right, and a second glass plate would essentially just have an arrow on it, and since they're both clear, you can see where the arrow is in relation to the diet. Well. Yeah, so you just had to align them and then manually take down measurements. I assume that the new models are digital, and we'll do that for you exactly. So people who are using a very modern theodolite might not have to be quite as I mean, you still have to be very careful the way you set it up, but you might not have to be quite as careful in the use of it in these older ones. I was watching this and it was interesting. It was so intricate. I mean, it looks like a telescope that simply can pivot up and down and left and right. That's all it looked like just at first glance. But then when you see all the individual parts that turn relative to each other so that you can actually take down these measurements, it's pretty phenomenal how complex it is at any rate. And eventually it's just so that you can figure out angles, Like it's like, wow, this is a really complicated thing just to figure out the angles. But it is very important to establish the relationship of these different structures within an excavation site. Moving on, we I mentioned range finders and electronic distance meter as an example, which uses some form of electromagnetic signal to establish how far away a reference point is from the device itself. So you can even have handheld versions of this where this is something that sends out a signal and then UH counts. It counts the time that it takes for a signal bounds back right, and because we know how fast the signal travels, that means you can determine how far away that object is. Another very similar piece of technology of this is the light are sometimes called a laser range finder YEP. Light detection and ranging UH usually is using pulses of laser light. It's not always laser, but more frequently than not it is, and so it's using these very short pulses of laser light to shoot out at whatever the reference area is, you know, whatever you're aiming at. It hits, that bounces back, comes back. Same sort of thing as the electronic distance meter. It finds the distance based upon the time it took for the light to leave the device and reflect off of the object and hit the receiver return senor so once you've done that, then you can actually say, oh, so this is that far away. And obviously again to establish what the parameters are for any site, this sort of stuff is really important. Yeah, and then those those uh, infrared, microwave or or ultrasound devices could possibly be used for stuff that's that's underground it's filled in, like in the case of vesuvious. Sure, yeah, you can actually have electromagnetic radiation that will penetrate the ground and reflect off of stuff, and it really works well if you have a uniform type of soil, like if there's a lot of different stuff in the soil, then you can get some corrupted readings. You know, you might too much static. Yeah, it's like it's like if you went into a um, you know, a beach, and you're using a metal detector and you're looking for some sort of coins there, but someone has thoughtfully gone in there and dropped a whole bunch of just worthless chunks. Yeah, yeah, something that the mel detector would pick up but would be totally worthless. And yeah, you'd be detecting lots of stuff, but none of it would be valuable. Same sort of thing with this stuff. If the ground is not in uniform uh kind of consistency, thank you, then you could have some real problems. And of course ledar won't penetrate the ground at all. It's it's light based, so it'll just reflect right back off. But these other ones like you mentioned totally would work and in fact do work. But still all of these are very useful for um, for collecting that precise data that is going to help out research down the line. As you are systematically destroying your excavation site right now. These approaches right here are a little less uh destructive than saying too. But obviously it would be really important when you want to do something like build that virtual environment we talked about earlier. You have to have all these facts and figures to do that. Yeah, and and before I mean, once you've got this this data set down, you can feel a little bit more comfortable going in and kind of must mucking stuff up knowing that you've already got the original locations of everything laid out. It's never gonna be the way it was back in the day, folks, we just have to resolve ourselves to that. Um. I think, isn't that the good thing about technology? Well, I'm just saying the archaeological site itself is never going to be perceived. So once we've established what what what what it was before we started getting really down and dirty, I think we're all right. You know, there's there's this one part of me who's like, we shouldn't disturb that because that's historically important. But I think, well, then if we don't disturb it, we don't learn any We don't learn anything. And I think as long as you're you're not running around chatting it belongs in a museum, then you know, basically, I'm gonna have to really think on this, Lauren, I'm gonna have to really take this into consideration. So I think in order for me to really have the time to think about this deeply, we need to take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Okay, we're back, and uh, for those of you who are wondering what my conclusion was, uh yeah, let's just rip it all up. Let's just rip it all up. Okay, So moving on. Now, we've talked about surveying equipment, Let's talk about geophysical equipment, which in some ways is similar, but there are other means of making sure that the place that you're you're exploring does in fact have some sort of archaeological significance. And one of the first things that we can talk about our resistivity meters, checking the resistance, the electrical resistance of an area, and you might first thing like, wow, that's kind of weird. You're checking to see you know, isn't the ground ground like, isn't it non conductive? And therefore you don't it doesn't help at all. No, Well, I mean that that sounds kind of like a really fancy metal detector. It kind of is, it kind of is. So the idea is that you're you're measuring for the electrical potential between an inner pair and an outer pair of electrodes or multiple electrodes that are across a region. Okay, so they're all kind of um testing to see what the conductivity of that particular area happens to be. So, if there is conductive material, then by measuring that resistance, you can determine, oh, there's something organic here, or perhaps there's something metal here that could indicate a human settlement was once here. If you start to detect less or more resistance and less conductivity, that's an indication that there could be something that's blocking the signal. That could be like a stone wall. So if now, if it's exactly what it should be based upon your knowledge of the soil in the area, that's an indication that there's nothing there and that maybe you don't need to waste your time dagging down there, that maybe you need to move a hundred feet off to the right or something. So there, you know, it's really to kind of establish what is a good place to to actually say this is where the excavation site is going to be. So uh, it is sort of like a male detector. There's another one called the electro magnetic conductivity instrument, which is essentially creating an electric current in ascending coil. So we've talked about this so many times, Lauren. The idea of an electric current running through uh, like especially an alternating electric current, creates a magnetic field, like a fluctuating magnetic field, and magnetic fields when uh fluctuating, if they're near a conductor, will induce electricity to flow. So that's the general idea. You've got this this probe that starts an electric current that allows this magnetic field to affect anything that's conductive in the area. So if there's something conductive in the soil, it'll start to have an electric charge run through it. And so by trying to by using an instrument the detects an electric charge. You can therefore determine whether or not there's something of interest down the soil. Right, So that's why this thing is has got a sending coil and a receiving coil. The receiving coil is to detect any of that other electric charge that might be happening in the regions. So it's an interesting approach. It's not as precise as the resistivity meters, but it is another kind of approach to similar to that of a metal detector um. In fact, I'll go ahead and mention mele detectors. We've talked about those before. I think we did a full episode of mele detectors, if I'm not mistaken. I don't think that we did personally, but perhaps you encristed could have been. It might be. It might be you know, you look like a librarian law and I'm sorry, it's just you know. Anyway, So male detectors use electromagnetic induction. So that's again a way of detecting con the materials. In fact, there are male detectors. They're so sensitive they can distinguish between different types of conductive metals. So you would be able to tell right away using a male detector, assuming it's the right type. I mean, not all male detectors are created equally, but assuming it's the right type, you would be able to tell very quickly what type of metal you are detecting. And if it's a type that you weren't expecting to find, that could mean lots of different things. It could mean that the site has been corrupted, it could mean that there's some other geological thing going on that is giving you false readings, all right, because any of these um electromagnetic devices could probably be thrown off by by wiggins in the area. Oh yeah, if you've got something that's really magnetic in the area, that could definitely throw things off, you know. Or if you've got a lot of just natural um metal deposits like ores or whatever, that could also throw things off. So, uh, you know, knowing knowing geological facts about the area you're excavating would be really important because you would know the odds of running into that type of stuff, So that would at least reduce the chance of a false positive if you already know what does and doesn't exist in that area. Typically, I mean they're always weird cases where you're like, wow, no one knew that the world's giant natural magnet was directly underneath where we thought there was gonna be a lost city, but it could just be a copper deposit. I mean, you know. So, Um okay. And the last, the last electro magnetic device on our list, um is one, the pronunciation of which you have proclaimed to be very excited about. Yeah. I proclaimed it because I realized that I didn't know what it was. It's magnetometer, so not a magnetometer. No, I wanted it to be magnetometer so badly. This is where I'm sad that I was. I was determined not to show my ignorance. So it's a magnetometer. I wanted it to be a magnetometer, and I wanted it to be a magnetometer in your heart. Yes, it's the leader of the brotherhood of this was that the evil brotherhood of mutants meter? No, it's the magnetometer, and it's a sensor that measures magnetic fields. So again, very similar. We're talking about a lot of electronic electromagnetic forces here, but they're all basically looking for similar things, just in different ways, right, So electrical resistance versus electrical current versus a magnetic field. Again, you're looking to see if there's anything that's creating small fluctuations. Now, the Earth's magnetic field is pretty predictable, but there's stuff that makes the earth magnetic field in very small regions fluctuate in subtle ways. So these meters are actually able to detect those subtle fluctuations and be able to tell you, hey, there's something here that is interrupting what would normally be the reading you would expect to find here, which again could indicate that there's something that was made by humans that's present there. Again, natural deposits could throw that off, so it may it's possible that the readings you get are actually you know, maybe you're gonna strike it rich because you just realized you found a vein of ore that's incredibly valuable, but it's not. You might be crying ing all the way to the bank, but no, it's it's generally used to try and find stuff that that humans have made, artifacts that would disrupt that magnetic field one way or the other. And even stuff that you don't think typically as being magnetic can affect a magnetic field. So that's why it's important. And then you have to have a really sensitive one to detect those small fluctuations. Right, it's not just like Ferris iron ore or anything like that. It's not just a needle that goes from zero to something's magnetic. You know it's gonna it's gonna be really precise. Uh. Then you've got a couple of other things. Ground penetrating radar GPR. This is an electromagnetic pulse, once again getting into the electromagnets, it gets sent into the ground. Stuff in the ground reflects the pulse back to the device, which the receiver will pick up on once it comes back to the device. And so the amount of time it took for a pulse to return to the receiver indicates the depth of the artifacts and for it to work best, you definitely don't want to have a lot of conductive material in it, or you're gonna get some corrupted data coming back. Okay, So so I missed that one on our on our list of electromagnetic devices, But that's okay, yeah, because in this case, it's more about it's like echolocation. It's more like that than as opposed to detecting a charge or detecting a magnetic field. This is more like specifically for for for metals. So yeah, you're just looking to see is there something that you wouldn't expect to be down there? And again this works really well on uniform soil because if there are a lot of big rocks in the area, that's going to reflect those signals back and give you false readings and then you might dig and you're like, wow, this rock I'm sure has incredible historical significance in some context, just not in archaeology. Uh. And then the other big one of course being Global Positioning Systems GPS, so that you can determine specific coordinates for the excavation site. This is obviously really useful so that you can have a planned visit. You know, it's not Archaeologists aren't the kind of people who just pack up in a suit, you know, a backpack and just wander out into the wilderness and then hope they find something and then stay and then stay there forever until it's done. Like they'll they'll do surveys and they'll do uh, they'll do some exploratory searches, and they'll they'll look at some other data we're gonna talk about in just a second. But they don't necessarily just you know, throw a dart at a map and say let's go there and then stay there. They usually will visit a site, establish some camp. Perhaps they'll just write down what the coordinates are, then return to get more material so they can do a full excavation. Sure also once they're there, measurements can be taken throughout the process of a dig to help to help figure out or to help note for the record for for future research exactly where objects were positioned from from above and from the sides. Right, This has definitely become more useful ever since UH GPS has has been well, the precision of GPS has increased over years. Part of that was an artificial leap, right because the the military. Originally the GPS was kind of um pioneered by the U. S. Navy, I believe, and UH and and they originally put kind of a cap on how precise it was going to be for for consumer end users, right, because they didn't want consumers to be able Specifically, they didn't want other states, other states being able to determine where things like military installations were with precision. I mean that would be terrible to give us potential enemies a direct line of of you know, site essentially from a satellite point of view of where your stuff was. But now that's all been lifted. So that's why you are able to use a GPS device in your car and be able to get precise directions as opposed to somewhere in the next three feet there will be a turn either to the left or the right. Take it less useful, Yeah, not as useful, more philosophical. So yeah, that brings us into satellites. So beyond just GPS, satellites have become really important in archaeology because they have unveiled potential excavation sites that people had just not ever been able to see in the in the you know, honestly, we've got we've got stuff. In Egypt is a great example right there. There are sites in Egypt that are covered in sand that have been for thousands upon thousands of years, and they're they're really remote, so it's not like it's a place that someone could have accidentally fallen upon it just because they have to be going from point A to point B, which totally happens. You know, kids playing under trees, for example, have led to major archeological finds. Yeah yeah, but in some cases they're just miles away from anything else of modern society, and so satellites started to pick up on things that archaeologists have found very useful. They will go back and review satellite imagery, especially if they have a general idea of where a site might be, like within let's say, given a hundred square mile range, that's a huge range to cover on foot, but on satellite that's pretty simple to take a look at then, so you might pour over. You could spend hundreds of hours looking at this stuff trying to find any sort of patterns or examples of something that could indicate an old settlement is there. Um and and also non visible spectrum ranges at the thermal infrared in in particular, I think can be really instrumental in determining where wear sites like this might be. Yeah. Yeah. There have been lots of examples of using infrared imaging to see the different densities of sand in an area, or even soil. I mean it's not I say sand because it's easy to imagine when you think of Egypt, but this this applies to spaces all of of the world. But if you are able to see that there are different densities, that suggests that there could be something that's buried underneath the surface which could require a closer look. And in some cases, I've seen pictures of archaeologists who are able to take UH an infrared image and then map out what looks to be a full human settlement, like a city. In fact, that an old capital of Egypt called Tennis was discovered this way, Yeah, well it was. It was further explored UM and Tannis is one of the ones that was made famous by Indiana Jones and The Raiders of the Lost Dark UM. But UH. In two thousand eleven, a University of Alabama archaeologist named Sarah Parrock and her team used used this imaging UM from NASA and commercial satellites to discover like seventeen pyramids, over a thousand tombs, and over three thousand ancient settlements in Egypt. That's pretty incredible, I mean, being able to discover this stuff. And as I understand, you saw a video of her talking about this, right, Yeah, she has a really cool ted talk about it. Really short one actually a good five minutes sort of thing, so we'll try to remember to link that out on social in this episode. Airs. Yeah, I read a great article that had some quotes from her and and her work. I think she actually I think the direct quote she had in the article was Indiana Jones eat your heart out, got some great attitude in it, and and yeah, the the technique has been used all over the place. Um. You know, it was also used in check O Canyon in New Mexico to discover a whole roadway system that was linear and built through topographic obstructions and twenty ft wide and ranged over two hundred miles UM, all by a people that were pretty sure didn't use animals for manual labor. Yes, so this was all human made. Like human humans dragged the equipment needed to construct this stuff for the entire length and breadth of it. That's pretty incredible, And there's possibility that we never would have known about any of that without this technique. And also, satellites are being used to help protect archaeological sites, so one of the big problems this brings us back to the top of our lap of our first episode in archaeology, you know, we talked about how archaeology essentially started out as tomb rating. Uh, well, tomb rating is still a thing. I mean you still you know, the market for antiquities is just as as alive today as it was back in the day when all the rich people in Europe said, hey, I want that stuff. It's more of a black market now because most of these are are preserved historical sites. But right, so, you you do have some people who in some eyes what you could call enterprising, and others you could call uh, you know, destructive because they are going into these historical sites and removing stuff. Um, but how do you protect everything? I mean, it turns out there are a lot of archaeological sites out there and you can't be everywhere at once. Well, archaeologists are starting to use satellites to try and gather data. Some of these satellites are gathering data on a daily basis, and they can review it and see if there are any new pits that are opening up that indicate that someone's rating something, and then they can alert the respect of countries authorities, and most of these countries have very strict rules about who can and can't go into these sites, so they can send security out to to check in on those places and cut down on looting. That this can even be you know, well meaning explorers who don't understand that that you know, you know, they're they're thinking, oh, I'm an amateur archaeologist and don't realize that by being an amateur, what they might be doing is is destroying important artifacts or even best case scenario, contaminating them because they're getting their grubby carbon all over everything. Yeah. Yeah, keeping carbon hands off me, you darn carbon ape. Also a sad note about about infrared spectrum kind of stuff. Um okay, so, so have you ever heard of the pigment Egyptian blue. I have heard it before, but I didn't know anything about it until you had done this research. It is, in fact the oldest known artificial pigment in the world, and it happens to reflect infrared light when a red light is shown on it. Okay, um so, And and that's even when over the course of like you know, some four thousand, five hundred years have passed, um and the paint has been reduced to like nano sheets. So the layer of paint is a billionth of a meter thick. Yes, it is. It is practically not there anymore, but just there enough to to like like a single layer of paint molecules. Okay, um, And and this this property UM, which is technically the property of calcium copper tetra silicate, which gives the pigment its color. UM has been used to both identify artifacts in the in the field and is being investigated by u g A Chemists, University of Georgia's shout out, hey that's my alma mater. Yeah dogs Um. It's being investigated for use in other applications like like medical imaging or security inc or l eds and optical fibers. I can see this being really useful for identifying a real artifact versus a fake one. If you were to shine the red light and and you've got no in for red back, then that's an indication that, no, this is not the real real You could argue that perhaps whatever the paint is has worn off to the point where there's nothing left except for that nanometer thing. Yeah, that would require you to actually scrub down to the point where you're losing artifact anyway, And I don't think that the color would be there for you to see if you I mean I think would essentially not be there anymore. So interesting. Yeah, all right, well we have wrapped up our discussion about archaeology and technology. There are other tools that we didn't really touch on that get much more niche oriented depending upon what the field is. Absolutely in, archaeology is a completely huge field. I honestly, every time we start researching for an episode, I'm like, oh, this will be a really fun episode. It will be so neat and tidy, and oh this is huge. Um. I mean this was not originally a two parter when we first envisioned it. Uh No, we could. We could probably plea go on for many episodes about many of the very specific technologies that different fields of archaeology are using. Sure, and and in fact, we have done some episodes about either specific technology we've mentioned already or related technologies. Obviously, the electromagnetic effect is one of those things we've talked about multiple times. So if you're interested in this kind of stuff, definitely look into it. I mean, especially if you're like a student and you have never really considered archaeology. That might be an interesting class to take when you're a freshman and you're just wanting to kind of explore and find out what really does spark your interests, because personally, I find the stuff to be cool, even if it means I'm not wearing a fedora and carrying a whip. I'm pretty sure you would allow be allowed to at least wear fedora in the field if you really wanted to. Yeah, probably be mocked relentlessly, but how is that any different from podcasting. So also, if you maybe if you would like us to do a little bit of that homework for you, um, write us in and let us know if if there's a specific topic that you want to hear more about. There was something we mentioned where you thought, you know, that was really interesting, but I really wanted you to go in more depth into that thing. Let us know, because we're more than happy to look into it and really dive in. If that's what you guys are interested in, or if there's just something else you want to say. Maybe you just want to say, hey, Lauren Jonathan, good job. You know you respond well to praise, So write us, send us an email. Our address is tech Stuff at Discovery dot com, or drop us a line on social media. We are on Twitter, Tumbler, and Facebook. Our handle is tech stuff hs W and Lauren and I will talk to you again really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it, how staff works dot com