[Aztlan] Maya ruins found from space photo

[David Hixson]

Here are some images from GoogleEarth mentioned in my
post (copied below):

http://www.famsi.org/aztlan/uploads/acanceh1.jpg
http://www.famsi.org/aztlan/uploads/acanceh2.jpg
http://www.famsi.org/aztlan/uploads/chunchucmil1.jpg
http://www.famsi.org/aztlan/uploads/dzibilchaltun-7-dolls.jpg
http://www.famsi.org/aztlan/uploads/dzibilchaltun-central-plaza.jpg

The Lat/Long coordinates of each scene are visible in
the lower-left of each image.  You can go directly to
these coordinates and explore the surrounding areas
using the GoogleEarth interface.

-Dave

------------------------------------------
Estimados Listeros,

While satellite imagery has certainly helped Bill
Saturno find some sites in the San Bartolo region,
this particular article is very misleading:

http://www.neatorama.com/2006/07/15/lost-mayan-ruins-found-from-space/

The image is NOT of a new site found using satellite
imagery.  It is obviously a satellite image of a
cleared, excavated, and consolidated set of ruins.

The caption below the image also mentions that Bill
Saturno also used AirSAR data to help locate
undiscovered ruins.  None of these newest discoveries
came from the use of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR /
AirSAR) data.

This is NOT to say that his work is anything less than
superb.  He has located archaeological sites using
commonly available remote sensing technology in areas
that we previously believed would not "show up" in
multispectral data.  However, any truly representative
image of those sites should appear like a stain of
different colored canopy (not two crisp pyramids
facing each other across a plaza, as implied by the
image in that article).  Bill found that differences
in foliage in his region implied locations of sites
beneath the canopy.

By the way, for those of you who are into "Google
Earth" - their newly updated resolution is AMAZING for
many areas of interest for Listeros.  In western
Yucatan, for example, you can see unexcavated ruined
quadrangles in open milpas at the site of Chunchucmil,
the reconstructed portions of Dzibilchaltun, and both
the main pyramid and palace group of Acanceh (among
many others).

In GoogleEarth, if you "zoom out" to the Maya area,
any of the tiles that look brown are the hi-res tiles
- zoom into them.  Any tiles that look saturated with
color are likely just Landsat data (30 meters per
pixel).  Look at the bottom of your screen and see if
the page has loaded to 100% - if so, and you still
can't see individual buildings and trees, then that
data is not loaded into GoogleEarth.

I'd be happy to load some GoogleEarth imagery into the
Aztlan folder of FAMSI if anyone would like some of
these GoogleEarth satellite photos without searching
for them.

-Dave

__________________________________________________
David R. Hixson
Doctoral Candidate
Tulane University
Dept. of Anthropology
__________________________________________________
"Nothing more useless than a bored archaeologist."
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