Silver, Minna Angelina

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Citation - WoS: 4
Citation - Scopus: 6
REMOTE SENSING, LANDSCAPE AND ARCHAEOLOGY TRACING ANCIENT TRACKS AND ROADS BETWEEN PALMYRA AND THE EUPHRATES IN SYRIA
(INT SOC PHOTOGRAMMETRY REMOTE SENSING C/O SCHOOL OF SURVEYIN, 2015) Silver, Minna; Torma, Markus; Silver, Kenneth; Okkonen, Jari; Nunez, Milton; Yen, YN; Weng, KH; Cheng, HM
The present paper concentrates on the use of remote sensing by satellite imagery for detecting ancient tracks and roads in the area between Palmyra and the Euphrates in Syria. The Syrian desert was traversed by caravans already in the Bronze Age, and during the Greco-Roman period the traffic increased with the Silk Road and trade as well as with military missions annexing the areas into empires. SYGIS-the Finnish archaeological survey and mapping project traced, recorded and documented ancient sites and roads in the region of Jebel Bishri in Central Syria in 2000-2010 before the outbreak of the civil war in Syria. Captured data of ancient roads and bridge points bring new light to the study of ancient communication framework in the area. Archaeological research carried out by the project on the ground confirmed the authenticity of many road alignments, new military and water harvesting sites as well as civilian settlements, showing that the desert-steppe area was actively used and developed probably from the second century AD. The studies further demonstrated that the area between Palmyra and the Euphrates was militarily more organised already in the second and third centuries AD than earlier believed. Chronologically, the start of this coincided with the "goldenage" of the Palmyrene caravans in the second century AD. Topography and landscape were integral parts of the construction of graves/tumuli as sign-posts guiding in the desert, as well as roads and all kinds of settlements whether military or civilian.
Citation - WoS: 2
Citation - Scopus: 2
THE POSSIBLE USE OF ANCIENT TOWER TOMBS AS WATCHTOWERS IN SYRO-MESOPOTAMIA
(INT SOC PHOTOGRAMMETRY REMOTE SENSING C/O SCHOOL OF SURVEYIN, 2015) Silver, Minna; Torma, Markus; Silver, Kenneth; Okkonen, Jari; Nunez, Milton; Yen, YN; Weng, KH; Cheng, HM
Traditionally polygonal tower tombs dating from the Greco-Roman era, especially found in the area of Syro-Mesopotamia, have only been treated as funerary structures without discussion of their other possible purposes. In this paper we wish to inquire whether they had other functions as well. The most famous examples of these types of tombs are situated in Palmyra in Syria. They are built of limestone, follow a square layout, and some exceed the height of 20 m. Similar structures are found in the Euphrates valley of Syria. The Finnish project SYGIS that worked in the neighbourhood of the Euphrates and Palmyra during the previous decade studied some of the structures in the region. As far as the tower tombs are concerned, our research suggests that new structural, topographical and spatial aspects can be raised, and GIS (Geographic Information Systems) can be applied for analysing their properties for visibility. The tendency to locate tower tombs along roads and the entrance areas of a city as well as at a mountain edge seems to indicate that the tombs may have had observational functions serving as watch towers. The aspects of the location in terrains are emphasized in the present study, and digital terrain models were utilized using SRTM DEM (Digital Elevation Model) data for carrying out viewshed analyses in order to survey the observational qualities of the towers in Palmyra, on Halabiya, on Jebel Bishri in Syria and Hatra in Iraq.

Silver, Minna Angelina

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