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Once again, an article all about something visual with neigh a proper visualisation in it, let alone a photo of a greater scope, and no original design trace out proposal or recreation. Both of the provided examples essentially look like weather-exposed rocks.

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The NYT article they link to in the first paragraph does a good job providing that exact thing:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/15/science/camels-sculptures...

This seems really standard for any archeological article, sadly. Every time with the bait.

It's harder than it looks. My own photos of my sites/finds have rarely turned out interesting either. Usually things are simply an unremarkable pile of stones, unidentifiable blobs, or far too massive for the camera.

That's leaving aside the ethical issues with photographing funerary sites/remains, which most archaeologists avoid by simply not releasing any such photographs to the media.

Personally, id find those interesting too - I've always found archaeology grabs my attention.

Once I asked a local archaeologist about why articles are always like that, and she told me that there's also a problem with looters. They try to only release pictures that don't give away the location, to prevent looters from ruining a site. Not sure if that's a general thing or her specific area of expertise.

Depends on the location. You usually don't release wide landscape shots if that's a major concern, but super localized photos aren't necessarily an issue. Not all areas take the same degree of precaution though (e.g., scheduled monuments in the UK are pretty much public).

Anyway, if you'd like an example of an "onsite" photo, I've uploaded one from an ancient settlement (2k+ years old): https://i.imgur.com/0ITzYZD.png

Bonus points if you can figure out which country it's from or better yet, pinpoint the location to within 50 miles.

Internet Historian is humorously documenting that it is possible to pinpoint the worldwide location of a flag with only the blue sky behind, or inside a hut lost in lapland, or inside a flat without outside light, or even a stone buried somewhere in the world (South of Spain). https://youtu.be/vw9zyxm860Q

I understand it would be possible with a photo to guess which side a rock faces, thanks to the sun/shadows, and then find all the rocks pointing this way in a country using satellite image, and filtering those which are not currently at war etc.

To the best of my knowledge, you can only determine latitude with shadows (and even then, current state of the art requires multiple photos to resolve ambiguities). To determine longitude, you need to correlate time or match features somehow. The flagpole search did that with flight paths and honking, which isn't applicable here. Vegetation would probably be a more useful hint if imgur didn't compress the detail out of it, but be particularly challenging regardless at the true latitude.

Thanks for the example! I'm not so good at sleuthing things from photos, so no bonus points for me :D.

I sort of see what you mean about "unremarkable", at least without context. Knowing its an archaeological site of course raises questions: What does an archaeologist see in those rocks that I don't? What made people settle here 2kya (besides the water source)? Why dig here to begin with (instead of a km either direction, instead of 5m either direction, etc)?

Similarly, if I was reading about the dig (a report or article or whatnot), I'd be asking questions like: what does the place these ancient humans chose look like? What does "near the river bank" mean? etc. This photo would help me understand those.

The key feature is actually the little slope you can see in profile. That's the flat land above the river being eroded down into the waterway, exposing subsurface materials. Some of the rocks had fallen out of that bank and it looked suspiciously anthropogenic. We were already in the area looking along that river because the statistical model of the landscape built up over previous expeditions + other evidence indicated that there should be something to find. There were a number of other sites (e.g. lithic production) found the same way. These rocks in particular were probably to support something like semi-permanent tent poles.

As for timing, people had been in the area since the last glacial maximum. I actually have photos of a blade from prior to the LGM in a nearby area, but it has colleagues visible in it. We simply haven't found evidence of people building these kinds of structures much prior to then in that area. I should mention that I'm deliberately underestimating this particular site's age because definitive dating hadn't come back last time I heard and it makes the guessing harder.

Diagrams work great too but they require more work, skill, and $ than (maybe) paying an intern to write body copy.

> Carving each relief took between 10 and 15 days; the ambitious project was likely a communal effort.

Also, where did this 10-15 day estimate come from? They shouldn’t just drop a detail like that with no explanation!

Something like The Sphinx from Romania (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphinx_(Romania)). At a first look you'll say it is an ancient sculpture.

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