News with the great archaeological discovery made in Georgia in 2018. A drone mapping system has revealed the secrets of a 3,000-year-old “mega fortress” in the Caucasus Mountains, a historical crossroads of civilizations. A work that has been published in the specialized magazine .
Dr Nathaniel Erb-Satullo, Senior Lecturer in Architectural Science at Cranfield University’s Forensic Institute, has been investigating the site since 2018 with Dimitri Jachvliani, his co-director at the National Museum of Georgia, revealing details that reshape our understanding of the site and contribute to a global reassessment of the growth of ancient settlements and urbanism.
According to the Finnish media, when archaeologists first visited the site in the spring of 2018, the grass was tall, but when they visited the site again in the fall, the withered grass revealed a larger structure. And much more than expected, about 40 times more.
The importance of this type of enclaves
Fortified settlements in the South Caucasus appeared between 1500 and 500 BC. C. and represent an unprecedented development in the prehistory of the region. Located on the border between Europe, the Eurasian steppe and the Middle East, the Caucasus region has a long history as a cultural crossroads with distinctive local identities.
Research on the fortress, called Dmanisis Gora, began with test excavations on a fortified promontory between two deep gorges. A subsequent visit in autumn, when the knee-high summer grasses had died, revealed that the site was much larger than originally thought.
Scattered over a huge area outside the inner fortress were the remains of additional fortification walls and other stone structures. Due to its size, it was impossible to get a sense of the site as a whole from the ground. “That’s what sparked the idea of using a drone to assess the site from the air,” Dr. Erb-Satullo said in a statement.
“Almost 11,000 photographs that were stitched together using advanced software”
“The drone took almost 11,000 photographs that were stitched together using a software advanced to produce high-resolution digital elevation models and orthophotos: composite images that show each point as if it were looking directly down.
