Archaeological Prospection最新文献

Ancient Šuruppak, today Fara, was one of the major Sumerian cities in Mesopotamia. It was situated along one of the ancient watercourses of the Euphrates River. Findings date it back to the Jemdet Nasr period around 3000 bc with a continuous occupation until the end of the Ur III period around 2000 bc. Fara was first explored and excavated by the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft in the years 1902 and 1903 under the direction of Walter Andrae. Multiple excavation trenches with lengths up to 900 m transect the 1 km² wide mound and are still visible today which enables us to georeference the excavation maps. Today, the 2.2 km² wide archaeological area is dry and without any vegetation. Thousands of deep looting pits are covering the majority of mound which not only destroyed its upper metres but also challenge the application of geophysical prospection methods and their interpretation. The magnetometer prospecting of selected areas on and around the mound was carried out with three devices, two total field magnetometers and one gradiometer. The individual survey areas were combined in post-processing by applying a high-pass filter on the total field data sets and multiplying the vertical gradiometer data sets by a factor of two. This approach provides visually uniform magnetograms, despite being obtained by different devices, which simplifies subsequent visual interpretation. These magnetograms enable us to review, and to extend the results of the old excavations. The comparison show a good correlation in accuracy to the old drawings and positive identification of the already excavated features with magnetometry. Highlights of the survey are the discovery of the city wall confirming its existence, the layout of a unique building complex in the centre of the mound, likely a temple, traces of canals inside the city and an evaluation of magnetometer prospection over a looted area.

The megalithic cluster of the Gor River valley (Andalusia, Spain) is one of the biggest dolmenic groups in Europe, made up of 151 preserved megaliths. In spite of this high number of known monuments, increasing loss and destruction of many of the graves has taken place during the last decades due to enormous soil erosion and anthropogenic activities. With the aim of recording the location of these lost megaliths, Digital Terrain Models and LiDAR data have been used to analyse the terrain showing a high quantity of structures that seem similar to those actually documented in the zone but that were not noticed until now. These possible new burial mounds have been tested by archaeological surface survey, choosing three contrasting areas as samples. Results have shown a high success rate for this methodology, even allowing the discovery of new megalithic graves in heavily researched areas. We interpret the likely higher number of burial mounds in the area to indicate greater territorial control in boundary areas between 4th and 3rd millennium BC.

This paper presents the results of an archaeological survey carried out in the Navkur Plain, Iraqi Kurdistan, as part of the ‘Asingeran Archaeological Project’. The survey was prepared using remote sensing products accessed via Google Earth Engine^ⓒ, a large-scale cloud computing service freely available to the scientific community that allows processing remote sensing big data. Outputs generated with a multitemporal approach are particularly successful for archaeological research, because it is possible to maximize the visibility of archaeological sites, improving their detection. Multispectral imagery from Landsat 5, Landsat 7 and Sentinel-2 collections were used and processed, testing their utility for finding unknown ancient settlements in the densely studied area of Northern Mesopotamia. Seventeen new sites were discovered in an already surveyed area of limited size (<100 km²), showing the potentialities of this method. The advantages of cloud computing for Near Eastern Archaeology and the results of the survey are also presented and discussed.

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based magnetometer systems became more and more attractive for large-scale archaeological prospection in recent years. Although their sensors exhibit the same sensitivity than the ground-based prospecting systems, UAV prospecting is seriously handicapped by the magnetic and mechanical disturbances of the drone and by limitations of a low-level flight. To minimize these disturbances, scalar magnetometers are attached only on a tether 2.5–10 m beneath the drone to be flown as close as possible above the ground. First, test measurements with UAV-fixed fluxgate magnetometers provide more accurate results than the scalar magnetometers in any configuration but have to overcome disturbance by vibrations. Here, we present a case study choosing the compact set-up of the Sensys MagDrone R4. The high sampling rate of 200 Hz of the three axis fluxgate sensors of the R4 allows sufficient filtering of the interferences generated by the UAV and external disturbances. High-precision flight control of the drone allows operating the sensors by radar-controlled flight height ∼1 m above the ground, which is a fundamental and indispensable prerequisite for archaeological prospecting. For our test, we choose the site Ganacker (southern Bavaria), where we expected a large range of archaeological structures and features with high magnetic contrast. We compare and verify the magnetogram with historical and recent geodata. Our results show that the R4 system offers an outstanding step forward regarding a successful application for archaeological prospection. Already now, the system is well suited for the fast mapping of large areas and archaeological sites with intense magnetic anomalies.

Underwater cultural heritage (UCH) contributes to history, the arts, the economy and science. The number of intact and easily discoverable UCH sites is decreasing due to excavation in China. To conduct active surveys for mapping archaeological sites, rather than mapping based only on incidental reported finds from fishing operations, a regional archaeological underwater survey method is proposed according to independent geographical units and historical archives. This method is based on the approach used for systematic regional archaeological surveys on land and comprehensively examines similar survey examples. Old port districts, sea routes, fishing zones and naval battle areas are potential targets for this method. From 2012 to 2017, the survey method performed well when applied in the Haitan Strait, China, discovering intact sites, fragmented shipwrecks and numerous interfering objects. The method needs further refinement to eliminate interference and to obtain more detailed information about UCH. The main steps in this method include the selection of potential wreck site areas, the use of sequential equipment and survey line design. Cooperation between archaeologists and surveyors is essential.

Saint-Maurice Abbey in Carnoët (Finistère) underwent an in-depth archaeological appraisal during 2018–2019, involving several non-destructive technologies: the geophysical survey revealed the presence of expected structures, drawn on ancient plans, but also the presence of structures unknown up until now. A group of buildings on the edge of the pond in particular raised several questions. A geochemical survey was carried out there in order to try to characterize these buildings and observe the potential complementarity between geophysical and geochemical surveys. The results of the chemical analysis do not highlight the same level of detail of the structures as electrical resistivity, but these analyses seem to be able to clarify the geophysical diagnosis by discriminating signals of structures from echoes linked to the geological substrate.

LiDAR data have become indispensable for research in archaeology and a variety of other topographic applications. To derive products (e.g. digital terrain or feature models, individual trees, buildings), the 3D LiDAR points representing the desired objects of interest within the acquired and georeferenced point cloud need to be identified. This process is known as classification, where each individual point is assigned to an object class. In archaeological prospection, classification focuses on identifying the object class ‘ground points’. These are used to interpolate digital terrain models exposing the microtopography of a terrain to be able to identify and map archaeological and palaeoenvironmental features. Setting up such classification workflows can be time-consuming and prone to information loss, especially in geographically heterogeneous landscapes. In such landscapes, one classification setting can lead to qualitatively very different results, depending on varying terrain parameters such as steepness or vegetation density. In this paper, we are focussing on a special workflow for optimal classification results in these heterogeneous environments, which integrates expert knowledge. We present a novel Python-based open-source software solution, which helps to optimize this process and creates a single digital terrain model by an adaptive classification based on spatial segments. The advantage of this approach for archaeology is to produce coherent digital terrain models even in geomorphologically heterogenous areas or areas with patchy vegetation. The software is also useful to study the effects of different algorithm and parameter combinations on digital terrain modelling with a focus on a practical and time-saving implementation. As the developed pipelines and all meta-information are made available with the resulting data set, classification is white boxed and consequently scientifically comprehensible and repeatable. Together with the software's ability to simplify classification workflows significantly, it will be of interest for many applications also beyond the examples shown from archaeology.

Prehistoric mines are often too large and too deep for conventional archaeological excavations. Non-destructive and minimally invasive methods of prospection can help to overcome these limits. Our case study of a Late Bronze Age opencast mine (ca. 1050 to 780 BC) shows the potential of geophysical prospection methods combined with core drillings. For the reconstruction of this mine, we combined electrical resistivity and induced polarization (IP) tomography, seismic refraction tomography (SRT) and ground penetrating radar (GPR). The geophysical data were collected based on an orthogonal grid of 10 longitudinal and transverse profiles, laid out over an area of ~330 × 300 m. The profiles allowed a three-dimensional interpolation of the geological units, the mining dumps, the mining areas and the residual mineralization. Additionally, two deep cores were drilled to ground-truth the geophysical prospection results. They provided information about the stratification at intersections of the measurement grid, and this proved crucial for validating the interpreted geophysical profiles. Each geophysical method applied provided different information for the reconstruction of the site: the electrical resistivity tomography offered the best clues as to the locations of the geological units and the dumps, the seismic refraction tomography visualized the transition between the dump or backfill layers and the underlying bedrock, and the IP measurements revealed residual mineralization. The georadar measurements, on the other hand, did not contribute to the interpretation owing to the limited depth of penetration. Based on the combination of borehole and geophysical data, it was possible to develop a hypothetical model of an open-pit mine for copper ore that developed in three phases (mines A–C) during the Late Bronze Age. Without the control provided by the core drillings, one of the mining areas (mine A) could not have been correctly identified in the geophysical prospections.

Ground penetrating radar supported by electrical resistivity tomography and gradiometer surveys were used to map buildings and infrastructure documenting sequential property use by three generations of the Jacob Forney family who began as farmers in the backcountry of North Carolina and rose to prominence in government and industry within the Southeastern United States. At Ingleside, the antebellum plantation house has been preserved, and the adjacent property remains relatively undisturbed. Context for the geophysical surveys was provided by archival photographs, written accounts including monographs and newspaper articles, and an archaeological excavation of the stone hearth within the plantation's summer kitchen. The location of an early log home with a stone-lined cellar with ties to the Piedmont Campaign of the American Revolution (in 1781) was newly discovered. In addition, a historic road, kitchen garden, and the postholes from an early post-in-the-ground building were imaged within the subsurface. The external summer kitchen and privy are associated with the plantation house constructed in 1817. Several cesspool vaults of potential privies are ingrown with trees. The results of the geophysical surveys document the evolving land use within one family in the American South and can be connected to a specific event in history, a goal of historical archaeology.

Modern archaeo-geophysical radar surveys are often executed with multichannel antenna arrays, which allows a much faster survey progress combined with a denser profile spacing. Furthermore, from a methodological point of view, a full 3D dataset is necessary to resolve small targets of a few decimetre diameter. However, only a few test surveys deal with the evaluation of the real improvement in data quality by applying such multichannel arrays. In this paper, a test survey with the IDS Stream-C 600-MHz radar device on a small area covering the Roman Bath of Kempten-Cambodunum is presented. The aim of the study is to figure out whether faint archaeological remains like hypocaust pillars, that is, the pillars of a Roman floor heating system, that are missed by single-channel devices, are detectable in an ultra-dense antenna array. Thus, the same area was simultaneously mapped with both GPR configurations. The results of this case study demonstrate the benefit of such antenna arrays for the archaeological prospection of small subsurface features with a diameter of 25 cm or less. For ground-truthing of the results, a comparison with old excavation maps was executed.