Contributions of ground-penetrating radar in research of some predynastic and dynastic archaeological sites at the eastern and western banks of the River Nile, Assiut, Egypt

Abstract

The ground-penetrating radar (GPR) prospection method has rarely been used previously in Egyptian archaeology and never for a necropolis. Archaeologists have looked at GPR as a powerful method for exploring subsurface spatial patterns in the archaeological record without excavation. The results of the GPR survey were compared with the archaeological excavation outcomes on two archeological sites in Assiut. The first site is the temple located on a rocky bench on the northern slopes of El-Hamamia, the Eastern bank of the Nile (a part of El Badari civilization period, belongs to Predynastic cemeteries). The second is the rocky tomb at the Western bank of the Nile at Gahdem (belongs to the period from the IXth to the XXXth dynasty). The main purpose of this study is to correlate the types of reflections recorded from GPR profiles and high-amplitude features visible in amplitude maps with unearthed archaeological features. The applied software was able to process and analyse different digital data set with the given parameters. In each investigated archaeological area, the details of the GPR model are correlated level-by-level to the data of archeological excavations of ancient ages and data of the historical documents. Three-dimensional time-slices of the GPR data allow the identification of the enhanced targets of potential archaeological interest before planning excavation. Therefore, this research paper can be used as a benchmark to evaluate the efficiency of GPR method for identifying buried archaeological artifacts/vestiges for future archaeological prospection in Egypt.