A Drone Uncovered A 3,000-Year-Old Mountain Fortress 40 Times Bigger Than Archaeologists Thought
A drone has revealed that a 3,000-year-old fortress in the Caucasus Mountains is actually 40 times bigger than archaeologists thought.
The fortress is named Dmanisis Gora and is located in modern-day Georgia, a country at the intersection of Europe and Asia.
Drone images show a large area of land with steep gorges, various field systems, and several stone structures. The new drone mapping has allowed researchers to redefine the boundaries of this Bronze Age settlement.
The Dmanisis Gora is one of many documented fortress settlements in the South Caucasus that appeared sometime between 1,500 and 500 B.C.E.
Research on the outer area of the fortress began with test excavations between two deep gorges. When the knee-high grasses died back in autumn, the researchers realized the site was much larger than previously believed.
“The drone took nearly 11,000 pictures, which were knitted together using advanced software to produce high-resolution digital elevation models and orthophotos—composite pictures that show every point as if you were looking straight down,” said Dr. Nathaniel Erb-Satullo from the Cranfield Forensic Institute.
“These datasets enabled us to identify subtle topographic features and create accurate maps of all the fortification walls, graves, field systems, and other stone structures within the outer settlement. The results of this survey showed that the site was more than 40 times larger than originally thought, including a large outer settlement defended by a 1km-long fortification wall.”
The team acquired a DJI Phantom 4 RTK drone equipped with a high-quality camera and flew it over the area. The images it captured were combined together and run through software to produce a digital map with elevation and topographical detail.
The team made sure to check each feature in the aerial imagery carefully to confirm its identification and create a highly accurate map.
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In order to understand how the landscape at the site has evolved, they compared the orthophotos to 50-year-old photos taken by a spy satellite from the Cold War that was declassified in 2013.
The analysis helped the researchers determine which human-made features were older and which ones were more recent.
It also aided them in their assessment of areas within the ancient settlement that were damaged by modern agriculture.
“The use of drones has allowed us to understand the significance of the site and document it in a way that simply wouldn’t be possible on the ground,” said Dr. Erb-Satullo.
“Dmanisis Gora isn’t just a significant find for the Southern Caucasus region, but has a broader significance for the diversity in the structure of large-scale settlements and their formation processes.”
The team believes that Dmanisis Gora’s interactions with mobile pastoral groups led to the settlement’s expansion. The population of the large outer settlement may have increased and decreased on a seasonal basis.
Now that the site has been thoroughly mapped, future research will focus on the population density, livestock movements, and agricultural practices in the areas.
The study was published in the journal Antiquity.
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