Sarah Parcak, a 2012 Emerging Explorer, is not your average archaeologist. She uses satellite imagery to locate Egyptian sites—tombs, temples, entire urban areas—that have been lost through the passage of time.
EARLY WORK
As far back as Sarah can remember, she has been in love with ancient Egypt. Although she cannot recall what exactly drew her in, she does remember one precise experience.
“The tooth fairy actually brought me this incredible book on Egypt when I lost one of my first teeth. It was a great book,” she says. “I actually read it recently and it turns out it’s a great piece of information.”
It was not just a personal interest in Egyptology that drew her to the world of maps, satellites, and long-lost ruins. Sarah’s grandfather, a professor of forestry at the University of Maine, was a pioneer in using tools to map forested areas. After spending weekends with her grandfather examining overlapped aerial photographs through a stereoscope, she decided to take her first remote sensing course in college.
“I just remembered the day that everything clicked and it started making sense,” Sarah says. “Yeah, I couldn’t do complicated physics equations, but I was really good at applying it. I innately understood how the technology would work for my area of expertise.”
MOST EXCITING PART OF YOUR WORK
“I would say, just finding stuff, that’s such an innate human trend, we love finding things,” Sarah says. “It’s something very old and primal. The idea that we can use this amazing technology to seek, find, and explore better and to understand our world.”
MOST DEMANDING PART OF YOUR WORK
“I guess fundraising and writing grants,” Sarah says. “There is a lot of tedium in that, but we all have to do that and it’s critical. You don’t get 95 percent of the grants in which you apply. So, I guess the administration drudgery is icky, but I am really lucky because I love most of what I do.”
HOW DO YOU DEFINE GEOGRAPHY?
“Geography is about looking at the types of tools to help us better perceive our world and the world around us. . . . Geography is such a diverse field. You can look at cities, you can look at rivers, you can look at archaeology, but I think it is also about looking at the interplay and influence, because you can never study one thing.”
GEO-CONNECTION
Contrary to common belief, most sites in ancient Egypt have not yet been discovered. In fact, less than one percent have been excavated. Using satellite technology, Sarah is able to discover Egyptian sites that have not yet been unearthed. Sites that may have taken years to find can be located and even mapped in a mere couple of weeks.
“They [satellites] allow us to see things very differently than what we simply cannot see, it’s like they give us a special superpower that allows us to see soil, vegetation, and geology differently—and that’s how we are able to find things that are literally hidden beneath our feet,” she says.
Also a professor at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, Sarah says Google Earth is a satellite resource students should take advantage of.
“You can use it to find so many different things and you can use it to answer big questions about geography, about landscape,” she says. “I tell my students that a picture is worth a thousand words and a satellite image is worth a million dollars.”
SO, YOU WANT TO BE AN . . . ARCHAEOLOGIST
Sarah suggests to students who are interested in archeology to “take tons of science classes. Take geology, chemistry, physics, biology, remote sensing. Take tons of science classes, because that is going to give you an edge in terms of getting into graduate school. Take multiple foreign languages. I would also say that double majoring is very important,” she says.
GET INVOLVED
“I would highly recommend any community folks to get involved in what is called the Archaeological Institute of America,” Sarah says. “It’s the largest archaeology body in North America. It’s very active, you get a cool magazine every month and you learn about expeditions all over the world.”