Projects / Programmes
Shallow geophysics in integrated archaeological prospections: collecting of field data, generating and interpreting of composite data layers
| Code |
Science |
Field |
Subfield |
| 6.02.00 |
Humanities |
Archaeology |
|
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| H340 |
Humanities |
Archaeology |
| P500 |
Natural sciences and mathematics |
Geophysics, physical oceanography, meteorology |
archaeology, non-destructive, methods, prospection, geophysics, airphotography, geographic information systems, methodology, integration
Researchers (5)
Organisations (1)
Abstract
The project follows upon the 20 years of development of archaeological prospections in Slovenia, and particularily the excellent results of geophysical prospections during the last decade. It develops the concept of integrated prospection, such as was conceived in Slovenia in the context of basic research projects in the late 80s / early 90s, and then partly applied in rescue archaeology. It explores the limits of interpretation potential of shallow geophysics in archaeological contexts, and includes other prospection techniques, through co-ordinated data collection and integration of results.
The project aims at formulating the interpretative problems of prospections, beyond the suggestibility and associatibility of the images obtained by geophysical mapping. At the basic level, this is about identifying the geophysical properties of archaeological features, identifiable as geophysical anomalies on our maps, by measurements on building materials used, and on typical mixed strata present. Such measurements should permit us to set the critical values for delimiting features on geophysical images. Even at this level, there are further data layers to be integrated (say within the GIS environment): even with simple geophysics, noise such as caused by surface morphology or recent land-use must be identified and eliminated by integrating DMR and modern cartography data. Combined use of various geophysical techniques, while widening the interpretative potential of geophysics importantly, poses serious problems of data collection normalization, integration of further data layers, and generation and interpretation of composite images. Generating composite geophysical images is a demanding task, considering as it must the nature of the parameters measured, and the appropriate normalization of the values measured.
By including prospection techniques other than geophysics (surface survey, architectural survey, aerial photointerpretation, etc.), the complexity becomes even more difficult to manage, mainly because of the different nature of the data involved, and the different logic in generating the archaeological meaning of such data. The project will consider the viability of composite images of geophysical and other data for image analysis.
On epistemological and methodological level, the key question will be the interpretation of images generated, notably regarding the interaction between natural sciences and archaeology within the cognition process. On the operational level, test cases from different natural settings (geology) and from different environments (arable lands, woods, urban environment, buildings) will be adequately represented.
