Archaeology – The Map Room

Remains of Lost Fortifications in Gibraltar Found Thanks to 18th-Century Map

Jonathan Crowe — Thu, 02 Jul 2020 16:53:43 +0000

The remains of a fortified wall, originally part of Gibraltar’s northern defences but since lost to rubble, vegetation and time, was re-discovered and excavated thanks to an eighteenth-century map of the territory held by the British Library.

The map clearly indicated the location of the Hanover Wall, which had stretched from the Tower of Homage—the Moorish castle at the pinnacle of the defences—down to the Hanover Batteries lower down the Rock, but whose location had been lost. The Hanover Wall appears (under another name) on other maps at least as far back as 1627, when Spain held Gibraltar.

Workers directed by Carl quickly found the remains of the wall, which remained intact, although fully submerged under dirt and foliage. The efforts of these men revealed the long-lost wall, a critical part of the Northern Defences which had been lost amidst the rapid changes in Gibraltar throughout the 20th Century.

Mapping Doggerland

Jonathan Crowe — Wed, 08 May 2019 19:16:49 +0000

The Guardian looks at efforts to map Doggerland, a prehistoric area of land in the North Sea between Britain and continental Europe that was submerged by rising sea levels at the end of the last ice age. “Using seabed mapping data the team plans to produce a 3D chart revealing the rivers, lakes, hills and coastlines of the country. Specialist survey ships will take core sediment samples from selected areas to extract millions of fragments of DNA from the buried plants and animals.”

LIDAR Mapping Reveals a Far Greater Mayan Civilization

Jonathan Crowe — Mon, 05 Feb 2018 23:29:50 +0000

A 2016 aerial survey of ten sites in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve used LIDAR to digitally remove the tree canopy from the landscape, revealing, National Geographic reports, “the ruins of a sprawling pre-Columbian civilization that was far more complex and interconnected than most Maya specialists had supposed”—and one that likely supported a much higher population than previously thought. The survey and its findings are the subject of a documentary special premiering tomorrow on the National Geographic channel. More coverage: CBC News, The New York Times, The Verge, The Washington Post.