Abstract
AbstractRecently declassified photographs taken by U2 spy planes in the 1950s and 1960s provide an important new source of historical aerial imagery useful for Eurasian archaeology. Like other sources of historical imagery, U2 photos provide a window into the past, before modern agriculture and development destroyed many archaeological sites. U2 imagery is older and in many cases higher resolution than CORONA spy satellite imagery, the other major source of historical imagery for Eurasia, and thus can expand the range of archaeological sites and features that can be studied from an aerial perspective. However, there are significant barriers to finding and retrieving U2 imagery of particular locales, and archaeologists have thus not yet widely used it. In this article, we aim to reduce these barriers by describing the U2 photo dataset and how to access it. We also provide the first spatial index of U2 photos for the Middle East. A brief discussion of archaeological case studies drawn from U2 imagery illustrates its merits and limitations. These case studies include investigations of prehistoric mass-kill hunting traps in eastern Jordan, irrigation systems of the first millennium BC Neo-Assyrian Empire in northern Iraq, and twentieth-century marsh communities in southern Iraq.
Highlights
Declassified photographs taken by U2 spy planes in the 1950s and 1960s provide an important new source of historical aerial imagery useful for Eurasian archaeology
We present here a spatial index to U2 film held by National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) that draws on the relevant records in CIA Records Search Tool (CREST) and on geographic information obtained from low-resolution tracking camera film
As our case studies demonstrate, declassified imagery captured by U2 spy planes has enormous potential to aid historical and archaeological studies of settlement sites and landscapes in Eurasia
Summary
Declassified photographs taken by U2 spy planes in the 1950s and 1960s provide an important new source of historical aerial imagery useful for Eurasian archaeology. Like other sources of historical imagery, U2 photos provide a window into the past, before modern agriculture and development destroyed many archaeological sites. U2 imagery is older and in many cases higher resolution than CORONA spy satellite imagery, the other major source of historical imagery for Eurasia, and can expand the range of archaeological sites and features that can be studied from an aerial perspective. Las fotografías tomadas por aviones espía U-2 durante los años 50 y 60, recientemente desclasificadas, son una nueva fuente de imágenes aéreas muy útil para la arqueología euroasiática. Bronze Age tracks, Iron Age canals, and medieval city walls that have since disappeared from modern view appear strikingly clearly in the most high-resolution of the CORONA images from the KH4B satellite, captured 1967–1972
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