ArchAtlas: Sites from Satellites

Astronauts' personal photographs with hand-held cameras during the early space missions gave Earth's inhabitants a new view of their home: a fragile and subtly-coloured globe, suspended in a black void. Now, several dozen satellites stream back images which routinely illustrate weather-forecasts and environmental news-stories. Once available only to the military, these are routinely made available by agencies such as NASA, and high-resolution imagery (at scales comparable to aerial photographs) is widely available commercially. These images allow a "zoom" from a global to a local view, giving a better appreciation of the settings of ancient sites both within their immediate landscapes and in the context of corridors of communication with a wider world.

    <td valign='top'>
    <p><b>South-East Europe</b></p>
    <ul>
    <li><b><a href='sites.php?name=argissa&ge=$ge'>Argissa</a></b></li>
    <li><b><a href='sites.php?name=mycenae&ge=$ge'>Mycenae</a></b></li>
    </ul>
    </td>

    <td valign='top'>
    <p><b>South America</b></p>
    <ul>
    <li><b><a href='sites.php?name=inka-sv&ge=$ge'>Inka Sacred Valley</a></b></li>
    <li><b><a href='sites.php?name=cuzco&ge=$ge'>Cuzco</a></b></li>
    <li><b><a href='sites.php?name=titikaka&ge=$ge'>Lake Titikaka</a></b></li>
    <li><b><a href='sites.php?name=machu-picchu&ge=$ge'>Machu Picchu</a></b></li>
    <li><b><a href='sites.php?name=nazca&ge=$ge'>Nazca Lines</a></b></li>
    </ul>
    </td>
</tr>
</table>

You can also explore these sites and others by using the interactive OpenAtlas.

All images on this page: NASA

Western Asia