Mapping the Ruins of the Middle Draa

The Middle Draa Valley in southeastern Morocco is a captivating region known for its picturesque landscapes and rich cultural heritage. However, upon closer inspection from the air, a whole new world of virtually untapped ruins becomes available to you.

I've spent about a month or so now mapping this region and its various ruins. Armed with only a few sources, this one being my most helpful by far: brill.com/view/journals/jaa/15/2/article-p141_141.xml?language=en

I've surveyed a good amount of the valley but I'm no pro at this, so I'm here to see if anyone can find anything more about these hilltop ruins, either research or survey-wise. Here's my progress so far, ignore all other placemarkers, I haven't yet taken the time to make it into a new map so I just added it with the rest of my research on medieval ruins around the Sahara. Feel free to explore though, what's mine is yours in this case: res.cloudinary.com/drbrq1k3e/raw/upload/v1687549719/user_uploads/standard/bxy3owbaekazohteye4k.kml




What I find interesting is that a lot of these ruins follow the same type of rectangular pattern, however, there's a clear split in pattern between medieval settlements and (what I believe is) their older counterparts.

Medieval Ruins:



Older Ruins:



There's also 3 major urban sites with a multitude of buildings at:
30.3200924, -5.8193614
30.1568763, -5.507968
30.4423586, -5.9802831

Anyways, I don't have much to say about this because there's just so little info. Happy exploring, please comment if you find anything new, I'm open ears! Also, if you have any other medieval Saharan ruins, shoot it my way, I'm always happy to add onto my map.

I wanted to bump this thread as well. This one has the "ancient" looking structures, not the other one I replied in. I find it interesting that these were found as far north as Morocco, but I'm not really surprised. What is really interesting is that there is a massive "dead zone" in Mauritania around the Richat and pretty far north of that.