What Was Petra Used For

Archaeologists accept institute a monumental structure buried nether the sands of Petra, according to a new study that drew on satellite imagery to scan the aboriginal city.

Satellite surveys of the city revealed a massive platform, 184ft by 161ft, with an interior platform that was paved with flagstones, lined with columns on one side and with a gigantic staircase descending to the e. A smaller structure, 28ft by 28ft, topped the interior platform and opened to the staircase. Pottery establish near the structure suggests the construction could be more than 2,150 years quondam.

"This monumental platform has no parallels at Petra or in its hinterlands at present," the researchers wrote, noting that the structure, strangely, is about the city centre only "hidden" and hard to accomplish.

"To my knowledge, nosotros don't have anything quite like this at Petra," said Christopher Tuttle, an archaeologist who has worked at Petra for near 15 years and a co-author of the paper.

Zoomed-in UAV image of platform. Photograph: I LaBianca

"I knew something was at that place and other archaeologists – who accept worked in Petra for the final, God knows, 100 years at least – I know at least one other had noticed something at that place," he said. But the structure's sides resembled terrace walls common to the urban center, he noted: "I don't call up everyone paid much attention to them."

Tuttle collaborated on the enquiry with Sarah Parcak, a self-described "infinite archaeologist" from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who used satellites to survey the site.

Parcak said that she begins surveys "quite skeptical" of what they might find – they are working on sites in northern Africa, Northward America, Europe and elsewhere – and that she was surprised to find the monument "turned out to be something significant".

"Petra is a massive site, and we chose the name for our article ['Hiding in patently sight'] precisely because, even though this is less than a kilometer south of the chief city, previous surveys had missed it," she said.

Tuttle and a team took subsequent trips to mensurate and examine the site from the ground. There they found scattered pottery, the oldest of which suggests the site could date back to the time of Petra's founding. "Nosotros're always very cautious on this," Tuttle said, "but the oldest pottery can be dated back relatively securely to virtually 150BC."

Petra was congenital by the Nabateans in what is now southern Jordan, while the civilization was amassing groovy wealth trading with its Greek and Western farsi contemporaries around 150BC. The urban center was eventually subsumed past the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman empires, but its ruins remain famous for the work of its founders, who carved spectacular facades into cliffs and canyons. Information technology was abandoned around the 7th century, and rediscovered by Swiss explorer Johann Burckhardt in 1812.

Along with the oldest Nabatean pottery, they found fragments that had been imported from the Hellenistic cultures who traded with Petra, as well as pottery of the eras when the Roman and the Byzantine empires took the city under their guard.

Overview of the monumental platform, looking south-east. Jabal an-Nmayr is is indicated by the left-facing arrow, and the slope of 'South Ridge' with agricultural terracing by the down-facing arrow. — Overview of the awe-inspiring platform, looking due south-east. Jabal an-Nmayr is is indicated by the left-facing arrow, and the gradient of 'Southward Ridge' with agronomical terracing by the downward-facing arrow. Photograph: G al Faqeer

In the mountains, valleys and canyons surrounding Petra, Tuttle said, "in that location's tons of minor cultic shrines and platforms and these things, but nothing on this scale". He said these sites, including a big, open plateau known as the Monastery and probably "used for various cultic displays or political activities", are the closest parallel to the newly discovered edifice. "To be honest, nosotros don't know a whole lot about it."

Those sites suggest that the structure was used for "some kind of massive brandish function", he said. Unlike those other sites, withal, the giant staircase does non face up the city middle of Petra, which Tuttle chosen a "fascinating" peculiarity.

"Nosotros don't understand what the purpose [of visible shrines], because the Nabateans didn't leave any written documents to tell us," he said, adding: "But I find it interesting that such a monumental feature doesn't have a visible human relationship to the urban center."

Nabatean shrines around Petra offering mixed clues about the ancient people's practices. Like other Semitic cultures of the day, the Nabateans used an indirect, "aniconic" style to indirectly represent their divinities: carved blocks, stelae and niches. Sometimes there will be "an empty niche, just a etching in the wall, which the empty space itself can be representative or they would've had portable images", Tuttle said.

Previous surveys of the site had missed the structure. Photograph: Thousand al Faqeer

Simply because they were in near constant trade with other cultures of the Mediterranean, the Nabateans likewise adopted figural representations. "Nabatean gods depicted as parallels to Zeus or Hermes or Aphrodite, and those kinds of things," he said.

The researchers published their work in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. They said that while they have no plans at this fourth dimension to excavate the site, they hope they will have the chance to piece of work in that location in the time to come.

Parcak said that she expects "some pretty astonishing discoveries over the adjacent yr" using satellites and sophisticated new techniques in s-east asia "and other densely forested/rainforest areas". A surveying engineering science called Lidar, for instance, has uncovered sites in remote forests in Key America.

"This technology is not nigh what y'all find – but how you lot can retrieve about things like settlement calibration and aboriginal human being-environment interactions more than broadly," she added. "What happens when you tin can truly map the near-surface buried features for an entire site? I'thousand excited, but nosotros need to think about the implications of having all this technology at our fingertips so we tin can utilise it responsibly."