CORONA Images Showing Major Sites. Credit: Figure by J.Casana et al.; CORONA imagery courtesy U.S. Geological Survey.Two thousand years ago, the Roman Empire erected forts across the northern Fertile Crescent, a swath of land stretching from present-day western Syria to northwestern Iraq.In the 1920s, 116 forts were documented in the region by Father Antoine Poidebard, who conducted one of the world’s first aerial surveys using a WWI-era biplane.
Distribution maps of forts documented by Poidebard , compared to distribution of forts found on satellite imagery. Credit: Figure by J.Casana et al., created using ArcGIS Pro version 3.0. The forts would have been large enough to accommodate soldiers, horses, and/or camels. Based on the satellite imagery, some of the forts had lookout towers in the corners or sides. They would have been made of stone and mud-brick or entirely of the latter, so eventually, these non-permanent structures would have melted into the ground.
Of those 396 forts, 290 were located in the study region and 106 were found in western Syria, in Jazireh. In addition to identifying forts similar to the walled fortresses Poidebard found, the team identified forts with interior architecture features and ones built around a mounded citadel.
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