I've Got to Hit the High Lights, Versu Saya

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A month off work and enough money to fly anywhere you send me, i just want to see archaeological sights. What tour do you design for me? Where do you me? Oh, boy o k ah, egypt aside, right? We know that's your first love, but till a month, you can probably take places in so probably a couple f days at every place. So maybe you have time to see kind of ten, ten things, you know, you want to hit the high lights. And i'm very biased, having been tov many places in the world, so i would say certainly going to ticul in guatemala. I cried when i visited them...

What can new technology tell us about our ancient past? Archaeologist and remote sensing expert Sarah Parcak has used satellite imagery to discover over a dozen potential pyramids and thousands of tombs from ancient Egypt. A professor of anthropology and founding director of the Laboratory for Global Observation at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Sarah’s work combines technology, historical study, and cultural anthropology to advance discoveries about the past while navigating the political and ethical dilemmas that plague excavation work today.

She joined Tyler to discuss what caused the Bronze Age Collapse, how well we understand the level of ancient technologies, what archaeologists may learn from the discovery of more than a hundred coffins at the site of Saqqara, how far the Vikings really traveled, why conservation should be as much of a priority as excavation, the economics of looting networks, the inherently political nature of archaeology, Indiana Jones versus The Dig, her favorite contemporary bluegrass artists, the best archaeological sites to visit around the world, the merits of tools like Google Earth and Lidar, the long list of skills needed to be a modern archaeologist, which countries produce the best amateur space archaeologists, and more.

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Recorded February 25th, 2021 Other ways to connect

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