Archaeoastronomy and Ancient Technologies 2014, 2(1), 1-7
DOI: 10.24411/2310-2144-2014-00007
Desert kites and stone circles of the Syrian Desert in satellite images
Amelia Carolina Sparavigna1
1Department of Applied Science and Technology, Politecnico di Torino (Polytechnic University of Turin), Corso Duca degli Abruzzi, 24, Turin, 10129, Italian Republic;E-mail: amelia.sparavigna@polito.it
Abstract
Covering a large portion of the Middle East is an arid land that we know as the Syrian Desert. This harsh environment is characterized by expansive lava fields: the harraat. If we observe these volcanic features from space, we discover that they are crossed by various stone structures, called "desert kites", that were Neolithic-period traps for game, theoretically. Several stone circles are visible in this region, too - like so many Stonehenges dispersed throughout the desert landscape. Equivalently to the holonymous English site, some of them could have functioned as observatories in antiquity. We can analyze their orientations according to sunrise/sunset azimuths by employing freely available software which works with Google Maps.
Keywords: Satellite Imagery, Google Earth, Google Maps, Syrian Desert, Harraat, Stone Circles, Sunrise/Sunset Azimuths, Sun Observatories, Software.
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