Minna Silver (Lönnqvist)

• PhD
• Professor at University of Oulu

Our digital modeling in 3D aims to visualize Neolithic crafted skulls found in the Near East for their preservation and study taking into account both the possibilities of skull deformation in vivo as well as crafting them postmortem. Decapitation and burying or caching human skulls is met already in Palaeolithic contexts. Postmortem cranial crafti...

The Euphrates and the Tigris valleys in greater Mesopotamia provide a treasure trove for archaeologists studying the Roman and Byzantine eras. There existed some parts of the eastern frontier zone of the Roman and Byzantine empires, remains of which are in modern Syria and Turkey. This was also the stage where some of the first steps in archaeologi...

Remote sensing has provided a modern wider perspective to approach the earth with its various environments and impact of humans by prospecting previously unknown frontiers of human life. The traces of mobile groups are archaeologically often more difficult to detect than those of the sedentary ones, but new approaches and methods have changed and e...

In 2015-2016 the Finnish-Swedish Archaeological Project in Mesopotamia (FSAPM) initiated a pilot study of an unexplored area in the Tūr Abdin region in Northern Mesopotamia (present-day Mardin Province in southeastern Turkey). FSAPM is reliant on satellite image data sources for prospecting, identifying, recording, and mapping largely unknown archa...

CIPA is contributing with its technical knowledge in saving the heritage of Syria by constructing an open access database based on the data that the CIPA members have collected during various projects in Syria over the years before the civil war in the country broke out in 2011. In this way we wish to support the protection and preservation of the...

CIPA is contributing with its technical knowledge in saving the heritage of Syria by constructing an open access database based on the data that the CIPA members have collected during various projects in Syria over the years before the civil war in the country broke out in 2011. In this way we wish to support the protection and preservation of the...

Traditionally polygonal tower tombs dating from the Greco-Roman era, especially found in the area of Syro-Mesopotamia, have only been treated as funerary structures without discussion of their other possible purposes. In this paper we wish to inquire whether they had other functions as well. The most famous examples of these types of tombs are situ...

The present paper concentrates on the use of remote sensing by satellite imagery for detecting ancient tracks and roads in the area between Palmyra and the Euphrates in Syria. The Syrian desert was traversed by caravans already in the Bronze Age, and during the Greco-Roman period the traffic increased with the Silk Road and trade as well as with mi...

Mardin is a world-renowned historical city in Tur Abdin region in Turkey with its extraordinary tangible and intangible culture. Astonishing cut-stone masonry, which is rooted from deep history is one of Mardin’s very distinctive values. Thanks to the wealth of high quality limestone sources that were formed between Lower Eocene and Lower Oligocene...

Nowadays we can travel by GoogleEarth 3D to Syria (http://www.worldcountries.info/GoogleEarth/GoogleEarth-Syria.php) and zoom in on the desert landscape of the mountainous region of Jebel Bishri between the Euphrates river and the Syrian Desert. This is the area, where the Finnish archaeological survey and mapping project SYGIS worked in 2000-2010...

Nowadays we can travel by GoogleEarth 3D to Syria (http://www.worldcountries.info/GoogleEarth/GoogleEarth-Syria.php) and zoom in on the desert landscape of the mountainous region of Jebel Bishri between the Euphrates river and the Syrian Desert. This is the area, where the Finnish archaeological survey and mapping project SYGIS worked in 2000-2010...

Remote-sensing, archaeological field survey and GIS are combined by the Finnish Project SYGIS in the studies of the Euphrates valley confined by the mountain of Jebel Bishri in Central Syria. Changes in the course of the river channel have caused transformations in the occupational past and landscape. The alluvial terraces offer evidence of the ear...

Site catchment analysis has usually been executed in archaeological studies pertaining to hunter-gatherer economies and site resource basis within a certain radius of a distance. It was initially introduced to archaeology by C. Vita-Finzi and E. Higgs. The Finnish project SYGIS carrying out archaeological prospecting, surveying and mapping on the m...

A ruined fort rises at Tabus on the northeastern edge of Jebel Bishri in Central Syria. The fort which is situated c. 25 km northwest of the city of Deir ez-Zor along the road to Aleppo overlooks the Valley of the Euphrates. The fort is roughly triangular in layout covering c. 300 m x 80 m x 100 m. It is connected with a graveyard and two separate...

SYGIS – the Finnish archaeological survey and mapping project of Jebel Bishri-is tracing new dimensions for the Roman eastern frontier or the so-called eastern limes in Syria. It has been noted in several Roman frontier studies that the Euphrates region is insufficiently studied to clearly define the development of Roman policy and the extent of th...

This communication deals with the design of a TDEM (Time Domain Electromagnetic Measurement) system suitable for Martian subsoil investigation. An experiment, called MASTER (Mars subsurfAce Sounding by Time-domain Electromagnetic measuRements) is described. MASTER is expected to achieve the following main objectives: measure electrical conductivity...

MASTER (Mars subsurfAce Sounding by Time-domain Electromagnetic measuRements) is an experimental project proposed to fly aboard the Italian Drill (DEEDRI) payload for the Mars Surveyor Program 2003. MASTER will offer the scientific community the first opportunity to scan Mars subsurface structure by means of the technique employing time-domain elec...

During two different space missions involving tethered satellites, two ground measurement experiments were performed. The aim of both experiments was the observation at the Earth's surface of spontaneous and man-made emissions propagating from the orbiting system through the Earth-ionosphere cavity. The first one was carried out in July 1992 on Ten...

Within the framework of the Tethered Satellite System (TSS-1) Project (bilateral cooperation between NASA and ASI, the Italian Space Agency) a measurement programme on the electromagnetic background noise has been carried out. From theoretical consideration on the cold plasma theory in the ionosphere, the expected frequency band of these emissions...

The mountain of Jebel Bishri forms a strat egically important natural bastion on the Middle Euphrates in Syria. The mountain has been a natural, economical and political border zone for different cultures and empires. The area is environmentally limited with the Syrian desert and the irrigated fiel ds of the river plain. The neighbourhood is the cr...

Surveying and mapping the archaeologically unexplored mountain of Jebel Bishri in Central Syria is the first step for protecting and preserving ancient remains in the area. The mountainous region covers over one million hectares of desert -steppe and steppe type environment between Palmyra and the Euphrates River. Finland with its growing modern in...

A ruined fort rises at Tabus on the north-eastern edge of Jebel Bishri in Central Syria. The fort which is situated c. 25 km north-west of the city of Deir ez-Zor along the road to Aleppo overlooks the Valley of the Euphrates. The fort is roughly triangular in layout covering c. 300 m x 80 m x 100 m. It is connected with a graveyard and two separat...