Maps for Time Travelers: How Archaeologists Use Technology to Bring Us Closer to the Past

by Mark D. McCoy

Popular culture is rife with movies, books, and television shows that address our collective curiosity about what the world was like long ago. From historical dramas to science fiction tales of time travel, audiences love stories that reimagine the world before our time. But what if there were a field that, through the advancements in technology, could bring us closer to the past than ever before?
 
Written by a preeminent expert in geospatial archaeology, Maps for Time Travelers is a guide to how technology is revolutionizing the way archaeologists study and reconstruct humanity’s distant past. From satellite imagery to 3D modeling, today archaeologists are answering questions about human history that could previously only be imagined. As archaeologists create a better and more complete picture of the past, they sometimes find that truth is stranger than fiction.
 

Genres: Science, Archaeology, History, Nonfiction, Anthropology, Geography

280 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2020

About the author

Mark D. McCoy is an expert in geospatial archaeology and Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Southern Methodist University. He is the author of over forty scientific journal articles on the archaeology of the Pacific Islands.

Reviews

[Wendelle]

This is a nice book about geospatial techniques in archaeology that is written for non-academics. It emphasizes that archaeology is not about treasure hunting, rather, it's about finding things out about past societies through examinations of sites for lessons about settlement patterns, crop markings, vertical layers of buildings, etc. through techniques such as airborne Lidar, terrestrial laser scanners, photogrammetry, geophysical diffraction tomography, GPS and GIS. The book also points to some interesting digital databases, such as the David Rumsey Historical Maps collection, Pleiades Stoa, Paleoindian Database of the Americas, Archaeology Data services, and Digital Archaeological Record.

[Peter Tillman]

Nature's short review, one of their weekly Five Best:
"From the 1940s, radiocarbon dating gradually transformed archaeology. Now, geographic information systems are transforming the past again, using technologies such as satellite imagery and 3D laser scanners. In his impassioned study written to change popular perceptions of archaeology, anthropological archaeologist and science-fiction lover Mark McCoy argues that treasure maps are giving way to maps for time travellers. “It is time”, he writes, “to say, ‘Goodbye, Dr. [Indiana] Jones. Hello, Doctor Who.’”

[Cathi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super interesting. I spend a lot of free time on google maps dropping the little yellow guy into different countries around the world. Archaelolgists, using today's available satellite tech, to understand and predict the how and why was something i had not really thought about previously. A great read.

[Lauren]

read for class

[K · Rating 5 out of 5]

A delightful read.