For many people, their introduction to the concept of ground penetrating radar came at the beginning of the movie, Jurassic Park, when scientists used pulses to locate and view the buried fossils of dinosaurs. But ground penetrating radar is used in a wide variety of archeological and preservation-related applications as well.
In November 2001, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service hosted the first of two user workshops on interpreting archeology ground penetrating radar data. The workshop was held at the
University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, Arkansas. A 2001 PTT Grant made the workshops possible.
Ground penetrating radar is a tool for archeologists and historic preservation researchers to discover and map archeological sites, historical features, and artifacts. The technique is becoming popular because it is fast, accurate, and can produce images of buried remains.
The focus of the workshop was hands-on interpretation of ground penetrating radar imagery. Participants collected data from a field test site and processed and imaged the data. Participants were required to have some previous experience in collecting ground penetrating radar data and in image processing.
Ken Kvamme, from the Department of Anthropology and
Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies at the University of Arkansas, was the host of the workshop. Additional facilitators included Dan Delea (Geophysical Survey Systems, Inc., North Salem, NH), Larry Conyers (Department of Anthropology, University of Denver, Denver, CO) and Dean Goodman (Geophysical Archeometry Laboratory, University of Miami Japan Division, Japan).
The first day of the workshop included surveying and sampling strategies for collecting field data at historic Mount Comfort Church and Cemetery. Participants learned to setup grids, determine settings for filters, gain and resolution, and reviewed potential problems and solutions associated with collecting data. In the afternoon they began processing and interpreting data. Participants learned techniques for background removal and cleaning up the data. In addition, they looked at data migration techniques.
The second and third days of the workshop focused on further data processing options and useful software packages, such as Quickdraw, GPR_Slice, and GPR Sim. They also compared their results with other techniques such as electrical resistivity and magnetometry. Learn more about the workshop.