HOME CURRENT ISSUE ANTIQUITY+ ARCHIVE CONTRIBUTE SUBSCRIBE CONTACT Figure 1. The distribution of kites, from Saudi Arabia to Kazakhstan. Click to enlarge. < < Previous Page Explore the Project Gallery Antiquity Volume 087 Issue 338 December 2013 Olivier Barge, Jacques Élie Brochier, Jwana Chahoud, Christine Chataigner, Marie-Laure Chambrade, Arkadi Karakhanyan, Emmanuelle Régagnon & Rémy Crassard Introduction High-resolution satellite imagery publicly accessible on the Internet (e.g. Google Earth, Microsoft Bing) greatly facilitates the observation of large archaeological structures. This is particularly the case for 'desert kites', dry-stone constructions comprising long convergent walls with an associated enclosure. Recent publications have significantly increased the number of known kites, including in regions where they had never before been reported (e.g. Kennedy 2012; Kempe & Al-Malabeh 2013). Previous research projects have been numerous (e.g. Helms & Betts 1987; Échallier & Braemer 1995) but isolated and at a regional scale only. Additionally, researchers were regularly faced with a scarcity of archaeological material, which often had no clear stratigraphic relationship to the kite structures. Thus, apart from a few isolated cases (Holzer et al . 2010), key issues such as dating kites and understanding their function have not been satisfactorily resolved. Hypotheses have been proposed based on historical evidence, rock carvings and faunal remains, some of them from sites interpreted as mass killing sites. These data are still insufficient, however, due to the unsystematic nature of the studies, and the current hypotheses cannot explain such a large spatial distribution (from the Arabian Peninsula to the Aralo-Caspian region) and presumably long chronology (from the Neolithic to sub-contemporary times). The GLOBALKITES Project and initial results Within the last few years, the number of inventoried kites has increased fivefold, and the known distribution zone has been greatly extended. Based on the inventory by Kennedy (2012) and supplemented by our findings and other published data, it is clear that kites are distributed with varying concentrations and discontinuities (Figure 1). The GLOBALKITES Project is facilitating the study of these structures at regional and local scales via the GeoExplorer GLOBALKI TES I nteractive Map ( http:/ / www.globalkites.fr ). This inventory demonstrates the surprisingly wide geographical range of kite structures, both in the Near East and in outlying regions. We refer to the extensive construction of these features as the 'kites phenomenon', and suggest that it raises questions about the origins of kites, for example, by diffusion or cultural convergence. The scale of this distribution also has implications for issues of dating and function, which both remain unclear. Investigation of the 'kites phenomenon' is at the heart of the GLOBALKI TES Project. The team comprises archaeologists, archaeozoologists, geographers and geoarcheologists, who are implementing an interdisciplinary approach previously little used in such studies. Satellite images provide substantial amounts of data that can be geomatically analysed, with the resulting spatial data used to identify and explain regional differences. To this end, an archaeozoological inventory and environmental characterisation are in progress. The fundamental issues, however, cannot be resolved without field investigations. This aspect of the research combines surface surveys and excavations, with special attention to architecture, and absolute and relative dating. In parallel, programming for automatic recognition of kites in Google Earth is being developed in collaboration with mathematicians and computer scientists. The Armenian example and the 'kites phenomenon' in the Old World Fieldwork undertaken in Armenia on kites discovered in 2009 (by current author AK; Karakhanyan 2010) led to the identification and study of 173 such structures (Barge et al . forthcoming). No other kites have been identified in directly neighbouring Antiquity Journal http://antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/barge338/ 1 sur 3 15/11/2013 15:26