Currently, most of the archaeological sites on the western Urals (Russian Federation) are heavily destroyed by plowing. Archaeological excavations on the entire area of large monuments, such as medieval rural settlements, are impossible, while local excavations do not provide enough information about the boundaries and layout of the monument as a whole. To obtain more complete information about the site a new approach is proposed, which includes a comprehensive application of non‐destructive nearsurface geophysical and geochemical studies. This approach was applied for the first time in Russia on the Cushman‐3 rural settlement. In the study resistivity, magnetometry, and electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) surveys of the site were consistently applied. As a result, the borders of preserved cultural layers and the thickness in different parts of the site were established. Previously unknown defensive structures in the form of ditches and ramparts, as well as the features of the proper layout were found. Therefore, in most informative sites within the settlement, the soil was drilled using an auger sampler and soil cores were studied for morphological and chemical properties. This made it possible to verify the presence of defensive structures and to study the properties of cultural layers, fillings of the ditches and pits. Soil science techniques allowed us to find the cultural layers outside the ditches, as well as to establish the causes of the destruction of buildings. The combined application of methods of geophysics and soil science made it possible to separate ‘archaeological’ geophysical anomalies from the underlying rocks heterogeneities, which can give ‘false’ anomalies under geophysical surveys. Thus, the consistent application of geophysical and geochemical surveys enables to obtain the most complete (for the non‐destructive study) information about the site, providing high‐speed research and a high degree of reliability of the results due to clarification of the consistent data with minimal volumes of archaeological excavations.

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This paper describes the measurement method allowing the reconstruction of the surfaces of the objects buried in the soil. Both natural test data and experimental modelling results were considered. It is shown that a strong correlation exists between the built isosurface and the form of a buried object. In our opinion the construction of isosurfaces is a distinct and prospective method of visualization of three‐dimensional electrometric data. Copyright © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.