Remote Sensing of Early States: Semi-Automated Case Studies from the Near East

The growth of early societies, and their urban transformations, are inherently geographical problems. Archaeologists exist at human scale, and cannot describe them at the scale of a settlement, let alone attempt to explain them. Our answer, an increasingly common one, is to exploit the perspective of multi-spectral satellite remote sensing, and to develop semi-automated approaches that go beyond human perception, and at speeds and levels of objectivity that are impossible for human observers.