Technology is such an important thing

now for the study of Roman archaeology. We need to have accurate maps and
reconstructions of buildings. One of the most important works
that's been done in recent years Was the reproduction of a map,
an entire map that's plotted out Rome in the time
of the Emperor Augustus. And the person who's been doing that,
and so many other creative things
using the new technology is archaeologist David Romano of
the University of Arizona. And we invited David to say
a few words to us as well. >> So my name is David Romano,
I am the Karabots professor of Greek archeology at the University of
Arizona School of Anthropology. One of my main interest
over the past 25 years has been the study of ancient cities and
sanctuaries. Specifically looking at them by means of
making new kinds of maps of the cities and sanctuaries and using some of
the new high tech methodologies. For instance,
GIS remote sensing of various kinds together with digital cartography
in order to study very specific aspects of a number of well-known
cities and sanctuaries. One of the reasons why these new
technologies are important to be familiar with and to utilize,
is because they create a whole series of new kinds of information
about the subject matter. So by means of measuring very
specifically, measuring very accurately, the sizes of roads, the sizes of
buildings, the sizes of gardens, you become familiar with a kind of
information that does not exist previously about these aspects of
an ancient city, for instance. So you're creating new kinds of
information that then can aid you in your study of the city or the sanctuary that
you do in the more orthodox manner. Yeah, I've been interested in
the city of Rome for many years. But there was a specific focus of
attention when I was at the University of Pennsylvania. It was led by my colleague,
Professor Lothar Haselberger who initiated a course called
Mapping Augustan Rome. And this was in the fall of 1988, we had 11 graduate
students and
1 undergraduate student. And we initiated a new study of the city of Augustan,
Rome by means of making a map and by means of cataloging
all the buildings and monuments and structures that we
knew about from the Augustan period. Making a high quality, attractive map,
writing the entries for each one of the buildings and
monuments, and creating a period plan of Augustan,
Rome that really didn't exist previously. We've made a catalog of all
the buildings and monuments and structures that were in
existence in Augustan, Rome. Something in the order of 353 of these. We also have a
catalog of 52 buildings and monuments that we were not
able to place onto a map. And so altogether, we have more than
400 different structures, buildings, monuments and structures of the Augustan
city that we refer to in the book and on the website. And that we also can visually
see,
on the map. So we can see where they are, what they're
in relation to, what roads are they near, what aqueducts are they near,
how far are they from the forum. How far are they from the mausoleum
of Augustus, for instance. Where are the rest of
the tombs of the city? So it's a visual picture of Augustan Rome, the likes of
which had not been created
previously in this kind of format. Question might be, was there something
unusual that came as a result of a map? Something that was
immediately obvious to us. And I guess I would say there wasn't any
one thing that was immediately obvious. But what was striking was
the nature of the map itself, the attractiveness of the map and the
whole idea of being able to talk about and look at the Augustan city altogether.
Which is something that's very
difficult to do when you look at a map that is based on all the different
buildings and monuments for the entire history for
the city of Rome which incorporates seven, eight centuries of architecture
all on top of one another. Very difficult to discriminate
the Augustan city. So what was most striking to me was
the fact that here in front of us was the Augustan City,
just the Augustan city up to the year 14. And so that in itself was something new.
By means of using GIS and
remote sensing and digital cartography, you're given the tools in
order to make very specific observations about a building,
a monument or a landscape by means of drawing, by means of making a new
figure or a new illustration. And embedding the illustration with data,
embedding the illustration with mathematics, embedding
the illustration with orientation information in degrees,
minutes and seconds by means of embedding in the illustration distances
between one building and another building. By means of embedding in the
illustration
all of these things at the same time so that you suddenly have
a wealth of information about a particular temple that
you had not had previously. One of the more exciting new developments
in the archaeological world is the use of lidar, for mapping landscapes,
for mapping buildings, for use in many different
fields of archeology. And what this means is that,
typically, an airplane will fly above a landscape with a camera which
emits lidar beams, these infrared beams, which essentially cover the landscape and
come back to the unit on the plane. So you get a point field with millions and
millions of points, which give you very specific
information about the landscape. And, by means of lidar, you'll be
able to map a landscape very quickly. A lidar because it has different levels,
and different fields, and different layers,
you can manipulate different layers of the lidar in order to remove for
instancefoliage or remove the tree cover from the landscape. In part, so that you
can see what's below
a forest, for instance, on the land. And so for those who are doing
vast mapping projects or covering large distances, this will become extremely
important
because it will save time and money. And it will give you,
very sensitive down to a few inches, a very high resolution, topographical
elevation and topographical digital
terrain model of the landscape. So this is really something that,
it's gonna be extremely useful. The price is coming down and
it'll be used by many. The same can be done for
facades of buildings using lidar. So you can get a very highly precise map
essentially of a building facade, or
the whole building by this technology, which will save time and
effort in the future. Well, in order to become
an archaeologist these days, you need to become
familiar with many things. You still need to study the languages. You still need to
study history and
art history. You need to study
the archaeological evidence. But there's a growing
sense today that to be an archaeologist going
forward in the 21st century, you need to be embracing scientific
methods every possible way you can. Because the new revelations,
the new exciting developments in archaeology are going
to be coming more and more from the result of scientific
inquiry of various kinds. And by that I mean by means of using, utilizing new
scientific techniques
that can inform the archaeologist of things that they would never would
have been able to know about previously. So for instance, using dendrochronology,
or using Carbon-14 results, or using airborne or land base remote
sensing, or using GIS studies. These various scientific methodologies
give you more information, more data and
scientific data that is not disputed. It can not be disputed. So it's no longer a
matter
of one person's opinion or another person's opinion or
a rebuttal and so on. But in fact you've got scientific
Information in front of you, which makes the study of archeology
much more exciting and revealing. [MUSIC]