Archaeologies I: Aerials Of Unrealised Civilisations
2024
Publication Design, Speculative Archaeology, Generative AI, Ancient Civilisations
- "Then perished all flesh that moved on the earth... Then life reappeared and life once again flourished... Times blend together, veiled by Legend, and Elam is situated halfway between the Dream and Barbarism."
- — Sophie Khan, Travel Journal, Villa Medici, 1993
Archaeologies I is a digital publication comprising 72 generative aerial surveys of hypothetical archaeological sites, each mapped to a discrete moment in Earth’s 26,000-year precessional cycle. Synthesizing Sumerian cosmological mathematics with contemporary artificial intelligence, the project asks a profound speculative question: what unrecorded civilisations, built with the same celestial logic as Göbekli Tepe, might have flourished precisely where history leaves a blank space? The result is a disquieting corpus of hypothetical terrains, presented with the austere authority of a forensic field archive.
Methodology
The Sumerian sexagesimal system (base-60) governs the project not as superficial aesthetic reference, but as a rigorous structural framework. Cuneiform numerals are mapped to precise spatial coordinates within a 3080×3080 pixel matrix, directly dictating the placement of architectural elements within each generated frame. Because Earth’s axis shifts one degree every 72 years—a cosmological constant that organized how ancient cultures aligned their cities, narrated their origins, and computed their fates—the publication produces exactly 72 images. This structural regimentation yields an unexpected artifact: the AI-generated sites consistently manifest perfectly symmetrical, hexagonal, and circular geometries. They are Platonic ideals of celestial organization, untainted by the chaotic topographical compromises that inevitably scarred real, organic settlements.The Aerial Survey
The visual taxonomy is deliberately austere. Rendering each site in high-key monochrome with extreme tonal compression, the images are barely distinguishable from authentic satellite reconnaissance photography. Architectural footprints emerge as precise, stark geometric shadows carved into vast, arid white plains. Some frames reveal dense circular compounds ensnared in radial earthworks; others isolate monumental enclosures in crushing spatial emptiness; a few document cascading hillside grids, barely distinguishable from the surrounding geological topography. Across the 72 frames, morphological variability is relentless, yet every site retains the legible signature of deliberate, celestial order—frozen in the visual language of modern orthographic cartography.Site Narratives
Select images bear the names of genuine archaeological landmarks—Göbekli Tepe, Jiroft, Herculaneum, Novgorod, White Sands. These are not spatial references. They are temporal anchors, marking which specific moment in the 26,000-year precessional cycle corresponds to a given epoch in human history. The hypothetical sites are entirely imagined. The project does not ask what Göbekli Tepe looked like from above; it asks what other contemporary civilizations, oriented by the exact same celestial mathematics and cosmological imperatives, might have existed elsewhere on the globe. Their ruins never made it into the archaeological record—except as artificial shadows cultivated by this speculative machine, existing purely within the negative space of recorded time.Generative Parameters
The prompt architecture is an exercise in calculated precision: "a top down satellite google earth view of an intricate odeon megastructure archaeological digsite in a vast natural land with unorthodox and creative shape and colour --chaos 10 --v 6.1." Naming Google Earth explicitly biases the model toward the processed, desaturated aesthetic of satellite cartography. Odeon megastructure directs morphology toward large-scale circular theatres, half-excavated. Unorthodox and creative grants permission to depart entirely from conventional typologies, while maintaining spatial coherence. Crucially, the deliberate omission of --style raw preserves the processed, somewhat distorted texturing inherent to actual orbital survey imaging, allowing the speculative landscapes to pass as authentic documents rather than digital fabrications.Conceptual Reframing
The project quietly proposes a radical decoupling of modern epistemology from ancient cosmology. Early civilisations did not treat astronomy as a separate discipline; it was the foundational framework through which mythology, history, and urban form were understood as a singular, integrated system. Modern archaeology tends to bracket that cosmological logic as mere superstition, reading ancient sites through a secular, empiricist lens. Archaeologies I refuses this separation. By generating sites with hyper-geometric precision—marked by the unmistakable fingerprint of algorithmic determinism rather than the pressure of topography and time—it forces a confrontation. The machine's clinical perfection does not invalidate the archaeological imagination; it reveals how our own assumptions have quietly limited what we deem possible in the deep past.
Context
Al-Badri, N. — Babylonian Vision (Artwork, 2020; exhibited at European Media Art Festival, among others)
Sweatman, M. B. — “Representations of Calendars and Time at Göbekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe Support an Astronomical Interpretation of Their Symbolism,” Time and Mind 17(3–4) (2024)
Tzur, M. — Once Upon a Time, or Never (Artwork, 2024; exhibited at Weizmann Institute of Science)
Parcak, S. — Satellite Remote Sensing for Archaeology (Routledge, 2009)
Covelli, J. — Speculative Treasures (Artwork, 2022–present; exhibited at Museum of America, Madrid, 2024)
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