Alongside magnetometry which helps document individual sites, Evan and his colleagues are using LIDAR to map out entire islands from the air.
In short, LIDAR works by shooting pulsating lasers from an airplane or drone. The laser pulses penetrate through vegetation and provide a clear image of the surface topography below. It has been used previously to discover lost cities in Mesoamerica and Southeast Asia, but is a relatively new method in Greece.
“There are several benefits of using these methods. They are non-invasive and can produce some amazing results. In the world of limited funding for research in the humanities, they allow you to be much more targeted than previously possible, using destructive methods like excavation much more sparingly to answer particular questions,” says Evan Levine.
LIDAR mapping of the island of Naxos is the topic of a recent article in Antiquity and will feature in the December edition of The Journal of Greek Archaeology.
Big histories of little islands
When using the methods that Evan Levine and his colleagues are applying, you find many things from several very different time periods all at once. While most archaeologists study particular periods, like Bronze Age or Classical Era, Evan Levine is using these tools to tell a new history of the Cyclades that spans thousands of years.
“We found everything from Bronze Age cities to Medieval castles and churches, and we may even have evidence of paleolithic activity on these islands,” says Evan Levine. “The responsible thing to do is to document all of it – from traces of exceptionally early activity to more recent archaeology like 19th century shepherd’s huts. It’s all part of the story of these places, and the work I have been doing allows us to think about how the earlier activity influences and interacts with the later activities.”
Many of their prehistoric findings are from 3000 to 1000 , periods when the region was home to the Cycladic culture, Minoans from Crete, and Mycenaeans from mainland Greece. But, surprisingly, Evan and his colleagues have also found artifacts that points to earlier human presence on the Cyclades.
“Some of our most exciting data focuses on the earliest colonization of the Cyclades during the Neolithic Period,” says Evan Levine. “These tools are allowing us to rethink how the earliest communities on these islands lived and interacted with the land and the sea around them. We definitely did not expect to find so much early material on such small islands, which clearly attracted humans for various reasons much earlier and in greater numbers than we previously thought,” Evan Levine says.
Methods like LIDAR, ground penetrating radar and magnetometry played a significant role in these findings according to the UCPH archaeologist.
“In some instances our methods have completely led to the discovery of the items we have found. In other instances, these tools have allowed us to do more than we otherwise would have, because they have made our search more targeted which allows us to document our findings more carefully,” he explains.
