In 1699, the Jesuit missionary Père Joseph Henri Marie de Prémare wrote home from his new quarters in Sumatra, a world still unknown to most Europeans, and difficult for them to grasp: ‘Imagine a forest of coconut trees, bamboos, pineapples, and bananas, through the midst of which passes quite a beautiful river all covered with boats; put in this forest an incredible number of houses made of canes, reeds, and bark, and arrange them in such a manner that they sometimes form streets, sometimes separate quarters: divide these various quarters by meadows and woods: spread throughout this forest as many people as you see in your towns, when they are well populated; you will form a pretty accurate idea of Achen [Aceh] and you will agree that a city of this new style can give pleasure to passing strangers…’ (quoted from Anthony Reid, ‘The structure of cities in South-east Asia, 15th to 17th centuries’).
To many of us, the idea of ancient cities conjures images of a dense maze of buildings, crowded streets, and towering walls. Yet archaeology tells us that urban societies sometimes looked very different from such a strongbox of people. Just how different became apparent to Roland Fletcher at the University of Sydney in the 2000s, when data from remote-sensing instruments in space began to augment archaeology’s eyes.
Unexpected cities
Back in 1994, NASA’s Space Shuttle Endeavour obtained the first radar topography data for selected areas of the world, producing high-resolution elevation maps of the Earth, which were more detailed and comprehensive than any previous topographic mapping. As the data were gradually made public, they revealed unknown archaeological features.
Celebrity beasts