It's been a few days since I started and forgot about this post, so this is somewhat old news, but I'm posting it anyway.I didn't notice when it went up a few days ago, but Heather Pringle has a news story in Science (via) which includes a bit about using Google Earth to map looting activities in Jordan (the parts about mapping Guantanamo Bay are also a good read, of course).I thought this all sounded very familiar, and sure enough, I've had the paper from the Journal of Field Archaeology that she cites (Contreras and Brodie 2010) in my Papers library for a few months now, but hadn't gotten around to reading it. So I read it, and actually it's pretty neat. The authors used data from the DAAHL to identify cemetery sites, and then monitored looting activities using the "Historical Imagery" feature in Google Earth. The idea of using time-series imagery to monitor looting isn't really new in itself, of course. Politis (2002) discussed much the same thing, but using aerial photographs instead, at Ghor as-Safi. Google Earth makes this relatively easy, though, especially because the historical imagery is already there. This is a type of project that's been on my mind recently, so it's nice to see that there's some interest in doing this sort of work.References:
2010 Contreras, Daniel A., and Neil BrodieThe Utility of Publicly-Available Satellite Imagery for Investigating Looting ofArchaeological Sites in Jordan. Journal of Field Archaeology 35(1):101-114.
2002 Politis, Konstantinos D.Dealing with the dealers and tomb robbers: the realities of the archaeologyof the Ghor es-Safi in Jordan. In Illicit Antiquities: The theft of culture and theextinction of archaeology. N. Brodie and K.W. Tubb, eds. Pp. 257-267. NewYork: Routledge.
2010 Pringle, HeatherGoogle Earth Shows Clandestine Worlds. Science 329(5995):1008-1009.DOI: 10.1126/science.329.5995.1008