Technology is such an important thing now for the study of Roman archaeology. We need to have accurate maps and reconstructions of buildings. One of the most important works that's been done in recent years Was the reproduction of a map, an entire map that's plotted out Rome in the time of the Emperor Augustus. And the person who's been doing that, and so many other creative things using the new technology is archaeologist David Romano of the University of Arizona. And we invited David to say a few words to us as well. >> So my name is David Romano, I am the Karabots professor of Greek archeology at the University of Arizona School of Anthropology. One of my main interest over the past 25 years has been the study of ancient cities and sanctuaries. Specifically looking at them by means of making new kinds of maps of the cities and sanctuaries and using some of the new high tech methodologies. For instance, GIS remote sensing of various kinds together with digital cartography in order to study very specific aspects of a number of well-known cities and sanctuaries. One of the reasons why these new technologies are important to be familiar with and to utilize, is because they create a whole series of new kinds of information about the subject matter. So by means of measuring very specifically, measuring very accurately, the sizes of roads, the sizes of buildings, the sizes of gardens, you become familiar with a kind of information that does not exist previously about these aspects of an ancient city, for instance. So you're creating new kinds of information that then can aid you in your study of the city or the sanctuary that you do in the more orthodox manner. Yeah, I've been interested in the city of Rome for many years. But there was a specific focus of attention when I was at the University of Pennsylvania. It was led by my colleague, Professor Lothar Haselberger who initiated a course called Mapping Augustan Rome. And this was in the fall of 1988, we had 11 graduate students and 1 undergraduate student. And we initiated a new study of the city of Augustan, Rome by means of making a map and by means of cataloging all the buildings and monuments and structures that we knew about from the Augustan period. Making a high quality, attractive map, writing the entries for each one of the buildings and monuments, and creating a period plan of Augustan, Rome that really didn't exist previously. We've made a catalog of all the buildings and monuments and structures that were in existence in Augustan, Rome. Something in the order of 353 of these. We also have a catalog of 52 buildings and monuments that we were not able to place onto a map. And so altogether, we have more than 400 different structures, buildings, monuments and structures of the Augustan city that we refer to in the book and on the website. And that we also can visually see, on the map. So we can see where they are, what they're in relation to, what roads are they near, what aqueducts are they near, how far are they from the forum. How far are they from the mausoleum of Augustus, for instance. Where are the rest of the tombs of the city? So it's a visual picture of Augustan Rome, the likes of which had not been created previously in this kind of format. Question might be, was there something unusual that came as a result of a map? Something that was immediately obvious to us. And I guess I would say there wasn't any one thing that was immediately obvious. But what was striking was the nature of the map itself, the attractiveness of the map and the whole idea of being able to talk about and look at the Augustan city altogether. Which is something that's very difficult to do when you look at a map that is based on all the different buildings and monuments for the entire history for the city of Rome which incorporates seven, eight centuries of architecture all on top of one another. Very difficult to discriminate the Augustan city. So what was most striking to me was the fact that here in front of us was the Augustan City, just the Augustan city up to the year 14. And so that in itself was something new. By means of using GIS and remote sensing and digital cartography, you're given the tools in order to make very specific observations about a building, a monument or a landscape by means of drawing, by means of making a new figure or a new illustration. And embedding the illustration with data, embedding the illustration with mathematics, embedding the illustration with orientation information in degrees, minutes and seconds by means of embedding in the illustration distances between one building and another building. By means of embedding in the illustration all of these things at the same time so that you suddenly have a wealth of information about a particular temple that you had not had previously. One of the more exciting new developments in the archaeological world is the use of lidar, for mapping landscapes, for mapping buildings, for use in many different fields of archeology. And what this means is that, typically, an airplane will fly above a landscape with a camera which emits lidar beams, these infrared beams, which essentially cover the landscape and come back to the unit on the plane. So you get a point field with millions and millions of points, which give you very specific information about the landscape. And, by means of lidar, you'll be able to map a landscape very quickly. A lidar because it has different levels, and different fields, and different layers, you can manipulate different layers of the lidar in order to remove for instancefoliage or remove the tree cover from the landscape. In part, so that you can see what's below a forest, for instance, on the land. And so for those who are doing vast mapping projects or covering large distances, this will become extremely important because it will save time and money. And it will give you, very sensitive down to a few inches, a very high resolution, topographical elevation and topographical digital terrain model of the landscape. So this is really something that, it's gonna be extremely useful. The price is coming down and it'll be used by many. The same can be done for facades of buildings using lidar. So you can get a very highly precise map essentially of a building facade, or the whole building by this technology, which will save time and effort in the future. Well, in order to become an archaeologist these days, you need to become familiar with many things. You still need to study the languages. You still need to study history and art history. You need to study the archaeological evidence. But there's a growing sense today that to be an archaeologist going forward in the 21st century, you need to be embracing scientific methods every possible way you can. Because the new revelations, the new exciting developments in archaeology are going to be coming more and more from the result of scientific inquiry of various kinds. And by that I mean by means of using, utilizing new scientific techniques that can inform the archaeologist of things that they would never would have been able to know about previously. So for instance, using dendrochronology, or using Carbon-14 results, or using airborne or land base remote sensing, or using GIS studies. These various scientific methodologies give you more information, more data and scientific data that is not disputed. It can not be disputed. So it's no longer a matter of one person's opinion or another person's opinion or a rebuttal and so on. But in fact you've got scientific Information in front of you, which makes the study of archeology much more exciting and revealing. [MUSIC]
