The use of aerial and satellite photography in archaeology is nothing new, but not long ago if you told the average archaeologist he could get it for free, he likely would not have believed you. Today, of course, we all know about Google Maps (or Google Earth with its fancier interface), and the surprise isn’t that it can be useful to archaeologists, but that it took a couple of years for someone to figure that out.
That someone was Scott Madry. According to National Geographic, Madry got the idea when he read of an Italian who accidentally discovered an ancient Roman villa while doing the first thing most people do upon discovering Google Maps — checking out where he lives. If archaeologists have money in the budget, it can be worthwhile to pay for services where one can do fancy tricks like look for things in the infrared, but for the archaeologist on a budget, much of interest is discernible in plain old visible spectrum satellite images. Madry discovered 101 features in Central France using Google Earth.
I felt inspired to check out one of my favourite archaeological sites, Cadbury Castle. Contrary to what you would expect from its name, there is no castle at Cadbury Castle. It’s actually a great hill where back in the Iron age, in the ballpark period of the historical King Arthur (if indeed there was any such figure), there stood an impressive fort worthy of a king of that time. That’s right. (Cue music.) Camelot!
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True, to anyone expecting a fairy tale castle with pointy towers and moat and drawbridge and all that, it’s not terribly impressive. But if there was an historical Arthur, he wouldn’t have been the king of legend either. Perhaps he was a Romanized cavalry leader, and Cadbury was his base of operations.
It is said that Arthur and his knights still descend from the hill on Midsummers eve to drink from the well of the church at Sutton Montis. I had assumed that was the church in the bottom left corner of the Google Maps image above. I stayed across the street from it one Midsummers Eve way back in a time before there were ISPs, but didn’t hear any body of knights or Roman style cavalry trotting about outside.
Perhaps, though, that wasn’t the location of the mystic well from whence they drank. The sharp eyed will note a strange circular feature in the lower right of the image. Let’s zoom in on that.
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Now what in the world is that? Might it not be the Sacred Well of the Knights of the Round Table? In truth, I doubt it. Perhaps it’s a simple hedge maze, or maybe a practice crop circle. If it was there when I was, then I walked right past it without knowing it was even there. You can bet I’ll check it out next time I’m in the neighbourhood.
For the amateur archaeologist or tourist Google Maps can be useful not only for discovering the undiscovered, but also for investigating the already discovered. There’s no excuse now for blithely walking by mystic wells without even knowing.
Here is another interesting thing I discovered in another part of the world.
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I’m not sure what it is, but I’m guessing that it is some sort of settlement created by people who aren’t seriously committed to straight lines and sharp corners and arranging things on grids. People who live in the middle of nowhere with no roads. Very strange. Next we need Google Drone, a web interface to camera carrying, flying machines. Militaries already have them. But that may be a capability the authorities won’t want to share. It’s amazing they’re cool with everyone having satellite images. Well, excepting Dick Cheney.
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