The images challenge ideas about the Empire’s eastern frontier, based off earlier data collected from a biplane.
, in the Jordanian desert. New research using declassified spy satellite images has revealed the likely traces of nearly 400 previously unknown Roman-era forts across the deserts of Syria and Iraq.
But Casana says what appeared to be a defensive line is actually a product of discovery bias, and although Poidebard’s pioneering work has been invaluable for generations of archaeologists and historians, it does not reflect the true state of the frontier. The remains of this Roman fort in Qreiye, Syria, was photographed by pioneering archaeologist and pilot Father Antoine Poidebard from his biplane in 1934.Those spy satellite photographs captured in the Middle East half a century ago now provide archaeologists with a unique record of how the terrain in the region once looked. Many of the archaeological remains identified in the images have since disappeared with the rapid growth of cities, construction of reservoirs, and scourge of conflict.
The new distribution of forts is very different than that seen by Poidebard, who described a line of structures along the Strata Diocletiananear the Iraqi city of Mosul on the Tigris River; far to the west, around the Syrian city of Aleppo; and notably in the west of Syria’s, an extremely arid region with few sources of surface water.
“This study applies a new technique to assess the distribution of forts, and proves that it followed complex dynamics like trade,” he says. Some of the newly discovered sites have been earmarked for future archaeological investigations on the ground, but others lie in active military zones off-limits to researchers.at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, who also wasn’t involved in the study, says the research also illustrates the enormous potential of aerial photography and satellite imagery for the study of ancient landscapes.
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