SPYING ON THE PAST: Declassified Intelligence Satellite Photographs and Near Eastern Landscapes

Abstract

Near Eastern archaeology has its origins in the scramble for great objects, as the great imperial powers of the nineteenth century filled their national museums. Since that time, the questions that archaeologists seek to answer have diversified. We are no longer interested only in the lives of kings; we are more concerned with society generally. Our questions now demand a perspective beyond the excavation trench; we have to consider entire landscapes if we want to know about the rise of urbanism, human land use and environmental impacts, and the demographic impacts of states and empires, for example. This broadening of research horizons was behind the growth of archaeological survey as a field method in the later twentieth century.