Desert kites () are dry stone wall structures found in Southwest Asia (Middle East, but also North Africa, Central Asia and Arabia), which were first discovered from the air during the 1920s. There are over 6,000 known desert kites, with sizes ranging from less than a hundred metres to several kilometres. They typically have a kite shape formed by two convergent "antennae" that run towards an enclosure, all formed by walls of dry stone less than one metre high, but variations exist.
Little is known about their ages, but the few dated examples appear to span the entire Holocene. The majority view on their purpose is that they were used as traps for hunting game animals such as , which were driven into the kites and hunted there.
Research published in 2022 has shown that pits several metres deep often lie at the margins of enclosures, which have been interpreted as traps and Trapping pit. The kites enclose surface areas with a median of , but much larger and much smaller sizes are also known.
They are typically found in areas with elevated but flat topography or topographically complex terrain, but are rare or absent from sloping terrain, mountainous regions, or within , although they occur at the margins of mountains. Often, the terrain within the kite is much more open than the outside terrain, lacking vegetation and rocks. In general, the visibility of the kites from their inside is poor, which appears to be a purposeful feature of their construction; for example, the ends and entrances of the kites often coincide with slope breaks (places where the slope changes). Within a given region, the kites tend to have a preferred orientation. They are absent from humid climates and from certain hyperarid areas, and their use may have been influenced by Holocene .
Their often enormous size and conspicuousness in arid or semiarid terrain renders them visible in , while their construction in rough terrain makes them almost invisible on the ground. Sometimes, natural features like are used in conjunction with the artificial walls to form a kite. Clearing vegetation around the lines or using rocks with a different colour from the background has been documented in volcanic terrain. In Arabia, cairns and linear stone alignments have been found associated with kites.
Kites have also been found in Mongolia and South Africa. , there were over 6,000 known kites in Asia and the Middle East, and in some parts of Syria there are as many as 1 kite every , to the point that they are partially overlapping or form complicated structures. Similar large enclosures that were presumably used as traps have been found in Europe, where they were dated to Mesolithic and Neolithic age; North America, where structures known as drive lines have been used into the 19th century AD; South America; and Japan.
Studies show that even low walls or linear structures like pipelines can effectively "guide" animals, which do not attempt to cross the lines even if they are physically able to do so, explaining the effectiveness of desert kites. The low visibility of the kite structures prevents the animals from recognizing the trap. The positioning of pits at the end of convergent enclosures and the presence of small walls delimitating pits from the enclosure would hide the pit from the animals until they are too close to change course in their panic. The entrances often are situated opposite to the direction of animal migration in the region on a wide scale, or of daily animal behaviours on a small scale. The use of desert kites may have had a significant impact on wild animals.
The advent of publicly available satellite imagery such as Google Earth and Google Maps during the 2010s, on which desert kites are visible to everyone, has led to a resurgence of interest in these archaeological sites and the realization that they are widespread. However, without fieldwork, it is difficult to gain a full picture of what they were. Only a very few kites have been excavated or subject to dating efforts, and many of these are not representative of the majority of kites.
Engraved depictions of the layout of desert kites have been found, some of which are schematic and others are like scaled models. Open questions in kite research include what they were used for, when they were used and why the technology is so widespread.
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