While We Wait for the Romans

Since we’ve got exciting news about some strange rectangles on Planina polje, we were occupied by the thought of finding (or at least confirming the existence of) archaeology in a most unusual place: a flood-prone, marshy karst field.

So we were back at the first opportunity, this time with a better infrared camera, hunting for ancient rectangles.

Spot the kite!

It’s fairly difficult to shoot a 300 by 200 m rectangle hidden in a vast grassy plain that has almost no visual reference points, with a camera 200 m above it and a kite that merrily dances around in the sky.

Infrared kite aerial archaeology takes a lot of planning … the very best wind and light conditions, and a lot of walking around, guiding the camera to cover the whole area of interest. That part is the trickiest one – you can’t check if you got the target when you bring the camera back down, as the near-infrared photos must be heavily processed before the interesting stuff shows up … if at all.

So immersed we were in getting the strange rectangles that we almost forgot how immensely beautiful Planina polje is …

In late May polje is at its best … lush green expanse, rare marshy flowers, birds singing their throats out … the colours, the light, the scents and the sounds …

We just had to take some pictures of this beauty from above – so as soon as we declared the infrared archaeology session over, the Old Blue rokkaku went back up, this time carrying the Insta360.

And we were rewarded with this …

But then, just after we packed our stuff and it was time for a beer, disaster struck.

One of us (we won’t tell you who) carelessly let the cans drop from his backpack, and since nowadays beer cans are made of paper-thin aluminium, they all got punctured and the beer went whusssssssssh all over the place.

The disastrous beer spill

As we were crying over spilled beer, a red car drove by, slowed down and came to a stop. A window rolled down and a hand emerged… holding two cans of cold beer.

“Take it, guys, we saw the accident and we’re always here to help!”

It was the firemen, members of a Volunteer Fire Brigade!

Cheers, guys – you saved us! 🙂

All kite aerial photos shot with Insta360 on The Old Blue rokkaku by Dr.Agon kites.

5 thoughts on “While We Wait for the Romans”

    • Thanks … the firemen encounter was magical – there were really just a few seconds between the beer going all over the place, and those guys offering new cans 🙂

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