Sarah Parcak
Sarah Parcak is from Bangor, Maine. She holds degrees from Yale (BA) and Cambridge University (M.Phil and PhD), is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (an elected position), a National Geographic Fellow, and a 2014 TED Senior Fellow. Sarah serves as the founding director of the Laboratory for Global Observation at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where she is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology. She is also the CEO of SpectralGlobe technologies (SpectralGlobe.com), a company which specializes in using remote sensing technologies to provide innovative landscape solutions. She is the winner of the 2016 TED Prize and president of GlobalXplorer°.
Sarah and her longtime sweetheart, Egyptologist Greg Mumford, work together on the Surveys and Excavation Projects in Egypt, which includes archaeological projects in the Delta, Sinai, and pyramid fields regions of Egypt. Sarah has written the first textbook on the field of satellite archaeology, called Satellite Remote Sensing for Archaeology, and has published numerous peer reviewed scientific papers. She is regularly invited to give papers at national and international conferences and symposia. She is also interviewed regularly for national media (Science, Nature, National Geographic, CNN, BBC). Her research has been featured in a major international BBC-Discovery Chanel Documentary, Egypt: What Lies Beneath,”, a BBC show "Rome's Lost Empire", and a BBC-PBS NOVA special "Vikings Unearthed." Sarah has worked with NASA, the U.S. State Dept., and has collaborators across the globe. She has given 150 talks to a range of audiences across the globe.
Presenter at
Spring Bible & Archaeology Fest 2023 – Plenary Speaker
Resilience After “Collapse”: New Discoveries from El Lisht, Egypt’s Renaissance Capital
This lecture will discuss ongoing work at the site of Lisht, Egypt. Lisht was Egypt’s Middle Kingdom Capital, called Itj-Tawy, dating to ca 1900 BC, and contains the pyramids of the two co-founders of Dynasty 12, Amenemhat 1 and Senwosret 1 (father and son), as well as a cemetery with the tombs of the many thousands of officials, artisans, and soldiers who called Itj-Tawy home. The city itself is buried in the floodplain, and its exact location is not known by Egyptologists. It is Egypt’s greatest primarily unexcavated ancient capital, and contains countless treasures that will help to rewrite the history of a period of time about which we know relatively little compared to Egypt’s Old and New Kingdoms (The Pyramid age and Egypt’s Golden age). The lecture will talk about how the site is representative of the great changes that can occur after a time of chaos (Middle Kingdom vs Egypt’s 1st Intermediate Period).
