Archaeology Page


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Archaeological sites around the world

Visiting archaeological sites has become something of a theme for me, so here's a collection of some sites I've visited. Above is a photo of the 'small' temple at Abu Simbel in Egypt. This one was dedicated by Rameses II to his wife Nefertari, but note that it still has four images of Rameses himself and only two of his wife.


[PICTURE] This skull photo was taken in the coastal desert of Peru near Chauchilla, at a site that was looted many years ago. The graves were robbed and the bodies were left strewn about, but the climate is so dry that they have not decayed, and many bodies remain with skin intact (I'll try to include another photo).


[PICTURE] Nazca Hummingbird: one of the animal designs etched in the desert near Nazca, Peru.


[PICTURE] Nazca Condor: another one of the animal designs of Nazca. Here I've experimented with some image processing on a photo I took during a flight over the lines.


[PICTURE] Machu Picchu, Peru: the famed Inca city hidden in the Andes above the Urubamba River.


[PICTURE] The Great Pyramids, Giza, Egypt: from left, the pyramids of Mycerinus, Chephren, and Cheops.


[PICTURE] Stonehenge, near Salisbury, England: one of the world's great archaeological sites, I'm hoping the restoration plans (which include moving the adjacent road and building a proper visitor center) will give it the respect it deserves.


[PICTURE] Chan Chich, Belize: this is a panorama (taken from the top of one of the mounds) of a Mayan site in which a resort has been built. This is from my work with JPL as part of a National Geographic study of the rainforest. See the September 1993 National Geographic issue, "New Sensors Eye the Rainforest," for a brief review of our work.


[PICTURE] Viking Ship: reconstructed from a burial site and displayed at the appropriately-named Viking Ship Museum in Oslo, Norway.


[PICTURE] Great Zimbabwe: the site for which the country of Zimbabwe is named, it includes a large circular stone enclosure and this conical tower (you can see me in the shadows at the bottom of the picture for scale).


[PICTURE] Wupatki, near Flagstaff, Arizona: an example of the many Native American sites of the Southwest.



Daniel Leotta
Email: leotta@u.washington.edu
Web: http://staff.washington.edu/leotta/