Taking
Photographs from the Air
In
the Maya area, the thick jungle cover makes normal aerial photography
for mapping purposes not as useful except in areas where the land
has been cleared for cattle or milpas. Since such land clearing
is on the increase, aerial photography will begin to take on an
importance even in areas of the tropics. In the meantime there are
plenty of sites where all kinds of settlement pattern information
could be gleaned from aerial photography. The placement of ballcourts
at El Tajin (Veracruz), Cantona (Puebla), and even Chichen Itza
could better be revealed with aerial photography then almost any
other method.
But
the real utility of aerial photography in many areas of archaeology
is for aesthetically pleasing records of monumental architecture.
Orsen Wells once narrated an impressive television documentary which
was filmed almost entirely from a helicopter. Chichen Itza and other
sites were included but Palenque was featured. This film must date
back to the late 1960's or early 1970's. There are directories of
documentary films at any good Library, in their reference department,
that would have the exact title and where the film can be rented.
An
immediate use of aerial photography is in recording the thousand-year
old Maya sacred highway system, the sacbe, "white ways."
These are monumental walkway systems (the Maya had no beast of burden
and no wheeled vehicles either). The sacbe are often 30 yards across
and may run for up to 80 miles, such as between Coba and Yaxhuna
(near Chichen Itza).
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Taking
photographs from the air
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These
ancient Maya highways are easily visible from the air despite the
thick jungle cover. Actually it is precisely because the jungle
is still there that makes the sacbes visible. When you fly over
the seemingly limitless expanse of luxuriant tropical rain forest
of the Maya areas of Belize, Guatemala, and Mexico, what you see
is the mile after mile extension of the sacbes as they cross the
land. For example, when the Maya built their sacbes across swampy
area, the Maya engineers had to arrange bringing in tons of fill
material. Today, a thousand years later, this fill material provides
an attractive place for several species of trees to grow. These
particular kind of trees would otherwise not be in the swamp at
all. So from the air what you see is a straight line of tall trees,
a band 100 feet wide going for miles across the landscape (most
of the Maya area is seasonal swamp, known as bajo(s) in the local
Spanish language.
The
same situation prevails across normal landscape. The Maya construction
crews brought in tons of dirt and other material to raise their
roadways above the land the sacbe was crossing, even if there was
no water. Sometimes these sacbe are ten to fifteen feet raised above
the terrain. Since the land which is not swamp tends to be bedrock
near the surface, the result for local trees was a wonderful ten-feet
deep area of fill dirt and rubble. Hundreds of years after the Maya
abandoned maintaining their highway system, certain species of local
tree have taken over the sacbe fill material. Again, from the air
you can notice these distinct species of tree, in lines going as
far as a eighty miles across the landscape.
The
result is that often the only way to see where the causeways are
going is from the air. On the ground the jungle may be so thick
that it is difficult to find the sacbe in certain stretches. So
the ideal way to photograph the Maya "highway system"
is from the air.
I
have tended to use a Hasselblad
to do aerial photography, mounting it on a Ken-Lab
gyroscopic stabilizer. But to get even sharper photographs, the
Linhof Aerotronica 69 is available. To learn more about the technical
capabilities of this remarkably precise example of German engineering,
I visited the home base of Linhof in Munich. The head of sales,
Dipl.-Ing. Ullrich Weigand, kindly made time to take me to the technician
who handled these systems. Linhof actually makes two professional
aerial systems, one uses 4x5 inch film, on a continuous roll. But
the exposure is a maximum of 1/500th of a second, rather slow for
aerial photography. The technician suggested that if I was shooting
from a helicopter that I would be much happier with a model 69.
69
stands for 6 centimeters high, 9 centimeters long format, using
a 100-foot roll of film. This way there is no need to reload film
during the flight. You get 320 photographs! This means that with
a single flight you would end up with the most impressive aerial
photography record ever achieved of Maya archaeology.
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