Monitoring Faida at the time of the site’s initial discovery in 1972 would have proven expensive, dangerous, and near impossible. The 2,700-year-old reliefs were of magnificent archaeological value, but as is often the case in unstable regions of the world, archaeology had to wait. By 2012, though, the team from the University of Udine in Italy had an addition to their toolbox: satellites.
Aerial imagery has been used to inform archaeology ever since tethered hot air balloons hoisted cameras into the air in the first years of the 20th century. Up high, it becomes much easier to locate, survey, and monitor archaeological sites. The images also hold particular value when those sites are located on difficult or hostile terrain. Public satellite imagery has now lifted those advantages to new heights.
In the early 2000s, the U.S. government began to declassify its collection of military satellite imagery collected as part of the CORONA spy program between 1960 and 1972. Such imagery predated the use of modern intensive agricultural techniques, which meant that archaeologists could—for the first time—view sites before they had been damaged by farming. It also meant they could cover vast geographical areas.
The arrival of tools like Google Earth in 2001 then democratized access to satellite imagery with a free, accessible service. Archaeological teams often survive on small budgets. The open-source imagery meant archaeologists could exploit satellites without needing to worry about high costs. Now NASA’s Landsat and the European Union’s Copernicus programs also provide free imagery.
“There are now vast amounts of open data satellite imagery which can be used for archaeology,” Stéphane Ourevitch, senior executive adviser at Copernicus, told The Daily Beast. “In an image, you can detect the presence of buried structures, especially during dry periods, thanks to the difference in ‘color’ of the vegetation.”
Now, the proliferation of commercial satellite imagery is giving archaeologists access to imagery with up to 50-centimeter resolution. This allows them to spot much smaller details like the spoil heaps left by looters. “Frequent pass” services also mean specific locations can be updated as often as every five days, on demand. Multi-spectral imaging has improved the analysis of obscure photos too by revealing otherwise hidden features on the ground.
At Faida, the Italian team had already used satellites to identify more than 1,000 new historic sites in the region since 2012—of which, only 40 were previously known. Now the team could use satellites to monitor the specific Faida site for any signs of damage.
Using Google Earth, Simi and her colleagues noticed several threats encroaching on the land around the reliefs: the construction of an aqueduct, an illegal dig, and an expanding farm. “This site was in particular danger because the people noticed that it was something, but they didn't know exactly what was there,” Francesca Simi, the project’s deputy director, told The Daily Beast.
So, in 2019, they decided to intervene.
The University of Udine team discovered the new aqueduct had already destroyed one of the precious reliefs. Another had been partly bulldozed to make room for a cattle shed. But it wasn’t too late for the others. The archaeologists alerted the local Kurdish government, which created a special buffer zone around the site to protect it from further destruction.
“This was a great achievement for us,” Simi said. “From the scientific point of view, we are now able to better understand the transformation of the landscape.”
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