Beijing, 2 Dec (ZXS) -- Why does archaeology need "space-ground coordination"?
The author, Xinyuan Wang, is a researcher at the Institute of Aerospace Information Innovation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and deputy director of the International Center for Natural and Cultural Heritage Space Technology (HIST) of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
I come from the Institute of Aerospace Information Innovation, Chinese Academy of Sciences. My team is doing archaeological and cultural heritage research from the perspective of space remote sensing. Especially in some sparsely populated places where people are difficult to reach, remote sensing can detect the ground at altitudes of tens of hundreds, hundreds or even thousands of kilometers, and there are often some new discoveries.
Cultural relics are divided into movable cultural relics and immovable cultural relics. The former are often displayed in museums; For us, with the help of remote sensing, we mainly do research on immovable cultural relics, such as the Great Wall site. Here I want to share a story, this experience made me feel that cultural relics have indeed promoted the mutual learning and exchange between Eastern and Western civilizations.
Han and Tang Dynasties and Rome: The Great Wall connects Sino-foreign exchanges
From 2012 to 2013, I did remote sensing archaeology in the Guazhou-Shazhou section of the Silk Road in Gansu, China, which included the Great Wall of Han and the postal post system built during the Wu Zetian era of the Tang Dynasty. The post system includes roads, post stations and other facilities. After thousands of years, roads were hard to find and the post station disappeared. Ancient roads can only be judged by caravanserai. Some of the post stations are tens of meters long on one side, and the larger ones are nearly 100 meters long. At that time, China had already done a survey of cultural relics "three pu". We use remote sensing archaeological technology to discover some suspected remains, and then we need to do field investigation and verification on the ground.
It was then that I recruited a foreign PhD student, Nabil Bachagha, who was Tunisian. Tunisia is a North African country bordering the Mediterranean Sea, and in Roman times it was a province on the border of the Roman Empire. Ancient China had the Great Wall, and ancient Rome also had the Great Wall (limes), and I wanted him to do a comparative study of the Great Wall of China and the West. I didn't know if it was feasible, so I took him to the field.
Survey team members investigate on foot the ruins of the ancient Roman border wall in Tunisia. Photo courtesy of interviewee
Guazhou (formerly called Anxi) to Dunhuang followed the ancient route of nearly 200 kilometers. We probably followed the route of the Great Wall of Han and the postal post system of the Tang Dynasty to verify the new discovery. As soon as the Tunisian student arrived in the wilderness, he said, how is the environment so similar to his native Tunisia? Both places are arid areas, desert Gobi, oases, and especially the Tertiary relict plant nude fruit tree, which aroused his great interest. He asked me if I could do research in his hometown. After returning to Beijing, based on my experience in the Gua-Sa section, I delineated his research area in Tunisia based on the preliminary analysis of remote sensing images, and asked him to use remote sensing archaeological methods to do so.
After a period of arduous indoor work, including the collection of relevant data, remote sensing image processing, preliminary interpretation and analysis, we did find some suspected archaeological remains. These "evidences" seen through remote sensing are preliminary and ultimately have to be verified by archaeological experts on site. At this time, I found Mr. Dhia Khaled, the Ambassador of Tunisia to China, and then contacted Professor Faouzi Mahfoudh, National Institute of Cultural Heritage of Tunis, and Professor Houcine Khatteli, Director of the Tunisian Institute of Arid Zones, and after many negotiations and cooperation agreements, our space archaeology research team was able to go to verify it three times. The third time is to cooperate with scientists from Tunisia, Italy and Pakistan to conduct field research and verification. Using space archaeology techniques and methods, we discovered 10 archaeological remains of the Roman period in Tunisia.
The joint team conducted field research and verification in Tunisia. Photo courtesy of interviewee
This matter has a big impact. On April 19, 2018, a press conference on remote sensing archaeological discoveries was held at the Tunisian Ministry of Culture, which was attended by the Tunisian Minister of Culture. Later, we signed cooperation agreements with the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Tourism of Tunisia. Scientific and technological cooperation research has also played a good role in promoting people-to-people exchanges between the two countries. At first, we went on a field trip and met locals who asked if we were Japanese. At that time, China's influence there was relatively small, and I only saw ads from Huawei. After that, thanks to the widespread publicity on Tunisian national television and newspapers, China really gained a reputation there. In China, Tunisia also became famous, and the geography paper of the college entrance examination that year also mentioned this collaborative research.
My PhD student has not only published papers in top journals in the field of remote sensing, but also received publicity from relevant Chinese media. During the defense of his doctoral dissertation, Mr. Diya Khalid, Ambassador of Tunisia to China, personally attended his thesis defense meeting and spoke highly of China-Turkestine cooperation. We're still in touch and working together. It can be said that small cultural relics promote the development of big causes.
The joint team conducted field research and verification in Tunisia. Photo courtesy of interviewee
Technology and archaeology: Technology empowers civilization to explore the source
When discussing the topic of civilization, I think it is necessary to clarify the methodology first. How to define civilization, which culture to lead the research, and which language to lead the research, will lead to different conclusions.
Exploring the source of civilization is not like finding the source of a river. The source of the river is clearly defined, the longest is the source, which can be measured and clearly seen on remote sensing images. But civilizations are different, especially a diverse and integrated civilization like China. One team found evidence in Shanxi, another team may have found earlier in Zhejiang, and may find earlier elsewhere in the future. So I think that instead of finding a definite source, I prefer to say that the source is always on the road, constantly doing research, constantly combing and searching. This is a process of "finding ancestors", where is the "ancestor"? Tracing back from generation to generation.
Once the methodology is clarified, research techniques are involved. Science and technology enable archaeological and cultural heritage research, which involves multidisciplinary collaboration.
Remote sensing archaeology mainly uses remote sensing technology to detect and analyze human activity relics and relics. Remote sensing can perceive the visible light, infrared and microwave electromagnetic waves reflected, radiated or scattered by ground targets at a long distance, and then detect and identify the target. This technique greatly enhances people's "eyesight". Historical relics are often presented in a certain form on the surface, and the different vegetation, soil, geomorphological features, etc. on the ground are different from the electromagnetic wave spectral characteristics produced by the site, and this difference is often difficult to identify by the naked eye. The remote sensing observation equipment receives electromagnetic wave data and then processes and analyzes it by computer, which can help us understand the archaeological target information of the observation site.
The joint team conducted field research and verification in Tunisia. Photo courtesy of interviewee
When civilization traces its origins, it needs archaeological evidence to have a physical remains as a carrier. At that time, when the Silk Road was applied for the World Heritage Site, some people abroad questioned where is China's "Silk Road"? Where is the physical evidence? Using high-resolution remote sensing image data for data processing, remote sensing inversion and spatial analysis through software, and comparing with historical documents, we found the site of the post station of the ancient post system, as well as the ancient oasis and cultivated land, and carried out the digital reconstruction of the Silk Road in this section. Where people are inaccessible and critical information is difficult to obtain by human beings, science and technology can help us find these hidden evidence. Remote sensing technology is more like marching to the front station, discovering places where suspected sites are found, and then field archaeology follows up to prove and link with each other.
In 2018, a press conference on remote sensing archaeology on the "Belt and Road" was held in Tunis, the capital of the Tunisian state. Photo courtesy of interviewee
East and West: Dialogue fosters mutual learning among civilizations
"Something asks", "Ask something". "East" and "West" are originally directional words, but when the "thing" Chinese used as a noun, it generally refers to all kinds of tangible or intangible things. This corresponds to the word "civilization". Civilization is actually a very inclusive concept, which is the sum of the material and spiritual wealth created in the development of human history.
Different ethnic cultures may have different characteristics, and civilizations need dialogue and exchange, so it is very important to create a "East-West Question" dialogue platform, which requires the East and the West to join together and find a common topic to exchange, study and discuss. It is difficult to reach a consensus immediately, but it is precisely because of this process of discussion that barriers and misunderstandings can be gradually eliminated.
We advocate civilized communication and mutual learning, and hope to build a community, which China calls "harmony but difference" - this is the greatness of Chinese culture. China doesn't want everyone to be the same. But there is one fundamental point that is certain, there is only one Earth. If there is only the eastern hemisphere, and there is no western hemisphere, the earth cannot rotate, and no one can survive. The same is true of civilization, there cannot be only Eastern civilization or Western civilization. Only with the diversity of civilizations can humanity prosper.
Dialogue and exchanges among civilizations should look at the world, and in this process, multidisciplinary knowledge and modern science and technology should be integrated, especially Internet digital technology. In today's highly developed information technology, people enter another virtual world, or cyberspace, while living in physical space. Our space information technology archaeology sometimes enters the virtual world, using remote sensing, geographic information systems, global positioning systems, networks and other technologies to do cultural heritage research. On the other hand, the construction of new civilization forms in the future is to be built in virtual space. Therefore, it is necessary to do a good job in the exchange of civilization between the east and the west, and also take into account the physical and virtual things. (End)
About the author:
Photo by Sun Zifa, reporter of China News Agency
Wang Xinyuan is a researcher and doctoral supervisor of the Institute of Aerospace Information Innovation, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Deputy Director of the International Centre for Natural and Cultural Heritage Space Technology (HIST) of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Chairman of the Digital Heritage Professional Committee of the Chinese National Committee of the International Society for Digital Earth (ISDE), Co-Chair of the Digital "Belt and Road" (DBAR) World Heritage Working Group (DBAR-Heritage), Member of the International Association for the Conservation of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), and Executive Director of the China Association for the Protection of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS-China). , Member of the World Heritage Expert Committee of the State Forestry and Grassland Administration.
Wang Xinyuan is mainly engaged in digital natural and cultural heritage protection, space archaeology and other research, and has undertaken more than 50 key projects. He discovered more than 10 major archaeological remains in remote sensing in the Guazhou-Shazhou section of Gansu, China (2013) and the Tunis section of ancient Rome (2018) of the Silk Road, and was the first time that Chinese scientists used space archaeology technology to discover archaeological sites abroad. He has published more than 170 professional academic papers and 5 books.