Archaeological prospecting

Investigating the buried remains of human activity represents a major task of archaeological research. For documenting historically relevant information and to plan and focus archaeological excavations, non- destructive geophysical surveying represents an established, indispensable tool to prospect archaeological field sites. Since decades, different near-surface geophysical methods and, especially, magnetic mapping approaches, are successfully used to explore and map buried archaeologically relevant structures such as the remains of ancient walls, foundations, or ditches. In this context, geophysical research focuses on further methodological developments which include, for example, investigating the potential of novel sensor technologies and the development of innovative and refined data processing and interpretation strategies.

This project aims at further advancing and promoting near-surface geophysical tools in archaeological prospecting. In addition to employ and evaluate novel field methods and acquisition strategies, innovative data processing and interpretation strategies are developed. In addition to further develop individual techniques such as ground-penetrating radar (GPR), magnetic. and electromagnetic induction (EMI) surveying, we work on integrated approaches that combine the data and results of various (geophysical and non- geophysical) methods in a quantitative fashion; for example, via innovative constrained or joint inversion approaches, using methods from statistics and machine-learning, or special visualisation tools from computer vision. Together with different national and international partners these innovations are tested and evaluated for variety of archaeological targets. Current case studies and field activities range from investigating roman villas in central France to prospecting the historical gardens of Potsdam.

Selected references

Tronicke, J., et al. (2020): Rapid multi-scale analysis of near-surface geophysical anomaly maps: Application to an archaeo-geophysical data set. Geophysics, 85, B109-B118.

Guillemoteau, J., et al. (2019): 3-D imaging of subsurface magnetic permeability/susceptibility with portable frequency domain electromagnetic sensors for near surface exploration. Geophysical Journal International, 219, 1773-1785.