The first-ever use of cutting-edge drone-based lidar in Central Asia allowed archaeologists to capture stunning details of two newly documented trade cities high in the mountains of Uzbekistan.
A team of researchers led by Michael Frachetti, professor of archaeology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, and Farhod Maksudov, director of the National Center of Archaeology in Uzbekistan, used drone-based lidar to map the archaeological scale and layout of two recently discovered high-elevation sites in Uzbekistan.
The medieval cities are among the largest ever documented in the mountainous parts of the Silk Road, the vast network of ancient trade routes that connected Europe and Eastern Asia.
High-res lidar exposes large, high-elevation cities along Asia’s Silk Roads
Likely of interest to Steve who was a central Asia guru at one point.