![]() ![]() ![]() In Egypt, her specialty area, she and her team have expanded the civilization’s known scope, spotting more than 3,000 ancient settlements, more than a dozen pyramids and over a thousand lost tombs, and uncovered the city grid of Tanis, of Raiders of the Lost Ark fame. “But it still works, and everything is on here.”Įxploiting subtle and, to the naked eye, often invisible differences in topog-raphy, geology and plant life, Parcak, a 38-year-old University of Alabama at Birmingham professor of anthropology, has used satellite imagery and other remote sensing tools to expose a stunning array of forgotten sites from multiple lost cultures. “Everybody makes fun of me because it’s a beast,” she says as the machine sputters and churns. In this cool, quiet room, where some of the most exciting modern explorations of the ancient world are underway, the closest thing to a historic artifact is Parcak’s fat laptop, which she hasn’t had time to replace in the last seven years. Nor is it likely that anyone working here will inhale dangerous bat dung spores, or contract a nasty parasite while transecting flooded rice fields, or face a tombside run-in with a rabid dog. In air-conditioned downtown Birmingham, there is no need to rise at 4 a.m. Sarah Parcak is an Egyptologist, but her lab is more Silicon Valley than Valley of the Kings: sleek desks, beanbag chairs, bountiful snacks and a row of computer screens that, even after 9 on a Monday morning, still exhibit glassy black stares. ![]()
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