Letters THE CONSERVANCY TURN
S 30 • PROOF OF PRE-C LOVIS
Expose Them, and They Will Come
american archaeology PEOPLE? • RECONSTR UCTING AN
ANCIENT MOUND
WINTER 2009-10
a quarterly public
ation of The Archa
AA Win 09-10
front end.indd
Flo Samuels Hayward, California
eological Conse
rvancy
Vol. 13 No. 4
Prehistoric Life
Mountaintops ON THE
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Anabel Ford’s view on the proper marketing of El Pilar (“Understanding El Pilar,”Winter 2009-10) is to leave the ruins covered, and that the tourists will come for that experience. Ford should stick to her profession, archaeology. I have visited Mesoamerican ruins that combined the covered and uncovered and few, if any, tourists were looking at the covered ruins. At two sites in Mexico where uncovered structures were located next to similar structures that remained covered, 90 percent of the tourists were visiting the uncovered structures. My profession is not marketing, but I do have common sense. What is sad is the inhabitants of the area around El Pilar need the money that comes from tourism. Ford’s misguided ideas will result in wasted development money and lost revenue.
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11/17/09 10:27:37 AM
Living Next to an Archaeological Treasure I was just reading about your coverage of the Troyville Mound complex in Jonesville (“Reconstructing the Great Mound,” Winter 2009-10). I no longer live in Jonesville,however,my childhood home, where my mother lived until her death, is located on the corner of what was once the Great Mound. My sister and I never lost sight of the incredible location of our home, and we continue to share the unfortunate story of its destruction with our students—hers in Lawrenceville, Georgia, and mine in Palm Bay, Florida. Rosa Ann Sadler Palm Bay, Florida
Sending Letters to American Archaeology American Archaeology welcomes your letters. Write to us at 5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517, or send us e-mail at tacmag@nm.net. We reserve the right to edit and publish letters in the magazine’s Letters department as space permits. Please include your name, address, and telephone number with all correspondence, including e-mail messages. american archaeology
Editor’s Corner Not so long ago, it was hard to imagine that archaeology would be conducted from space. But, unlikely as it seems, that very thing has been going on for several decades. Archaeology in space has nothing to do with digging and everything to do with producing satellite remote sensing images that can penetrate dense ground cover. NASA is known for space exploration, but it also dabbles in archaeology. (See “Extremely Remote Sensing,” p.32.) Back in the 1970s, Tom Sever, who then worked for NASA, had the epiphany that aerial remote sensing—some of the images are taken from planes as well as satellites—would become an invaluable tool for archaeologists. He managed to persuade others of its importance, and by the 1980s NASA was involved in a number of investigations. Strangely enough, an archaeological site that goes undetected at ground level can be discerned from an altitude of hundreds of miles by a satellite or thousands of feet by a plane. Collaborating with Sever and NASA, University of Colorado archaeologist Payson Sheets discovered prehistoric footpaths in Costa Rica. Some of the footpaths, which dated as far back as 500 b.c., could be seen at surface level. But others could only be seen by infrared ARS images. Sheets’ project is just one of a number of investigations that have benefitted from aerial remote sensing. Sheets said he is “colossally fortunate” to have NASA technology at his disposal.
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