2007_JAS.pdf (574.7 kB)
Monuments on a migrating Nile
journal contribution
posted on 2013-08-30, 10:02 authored by John HillierJohn Hillier, Judith M. Bunbury, Angus GrahamRiver courses migrate, but many Egyptologists plot the present-day River Nile on maps of the valley in archaeological times. This may have misled interpretations of ancient monuments and settlements. We show a river migrating rapidly on historical timescales in the Luxor region, sweeping > 5 km across the valley at rates on the order of 2-3 km per 1000 years. Satellite elevation data (SRTM), processed by a novel method, and Landsat imagery are used to trace ancient river levees and extend trends present in 200 years of archive maps thousands of years into the past. This supplements observations by Ptolemy (121-141 AD) and places local geo-archaeological studies in a wider spatial and temporal context. Satellite data are demonstrated to be a relatively quick and easy constraint upon ancient river courses, and a basis for investigations along the Egyptian Nile, even in logistically inaccessible regions.
History
School
- Social Sciences
Department
- Geography and Environment
Citation
HILLIER, J.K., BUNBURY, J.M. and GRAHAM, A., 2007. Monuments on a migrating Nile. Journal of Archaeological Science, 34 (7), pp. 1011 - 1015.Publisher
© Elsevier Ltd.Version
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publication date
2007Notes
This article was published in the Journal of Archaeological Science [© Elsevier Ltd.] and the definitive version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2006.09.011ISSN
0305-4403eISSN
1095-9238Publisher version
Language
- en