Archaeology Underwater and through the Air

 This class is offered during March 2025 at OLLI at Illinois.

Introduction

In the early days of archaeology, archaeologists excavated temples and tombs at well-known sites in the Middle East and around the Mediterranean. As the field has become more interdisciplinary and surveying techniques more advanced, the focus has shifted to regional archaeology and selective excavation of less accessible sites.

 Landscape archaeology, sometimes called environmental archaeology, is “big-picture” archaeology in which single archaeological sites are studied in the larger contexts of environment and climate. Researchers study how people use local resources for food and shelter and adapt to changing temperatures and water levels. Advances in remote sensing allow locating and mapping cities previously obscured by jungles and hunter-gatherer sites now underwater along ocean shores or lakebeds. Advances in computing and artificial intelligence allow integration of huge data sets gathered by both older formats (e.g. maps) and by new technology (e.g. LiDAR and satellite views). 

LiDAR video 

 The class is organized by geographical region, with heavy emphasis on the Middle East and Mediterranean areas.

The first class covered the above introduction and concentrated on "Doggerland," the area of submerged land between Britain and Scandinavia during the Last Glacial Maximum. Stunning evidence of Mesolithic hunter-gatherer cultures (stone tools, wooden structures, artifacts made of bone and antler) have been recovered from Doggerland by using underwater surveying.

                                                    Francis Lima-own work (Wikipedia)

One of the sites we looked at was Star Carr in Britain, and we saw a small portion of a documentary. (I recommend looking at the rest of it, especially the section* near the end on how ancient wood soaked in sea water is conserved).

Website 

Documentary*