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.

Magnetic prospecting of burial grounds is still a great challenge in the field of archaeological geophysics. Some graves appear as positive anomalies, whereas others do not generate any traces or even show up by negative anomalies. This study involves ground magnetic survey, rock magnetic and magnetic mineralogy examinations of soils to determine factors responsible for the formation of magnetic anomalies on Late Roman time burial grounds of Chernyakhiv-Sântana de Mures archaeological culture located in the forest-steppe of Ukraine. We surveyed these sites by a total magnetic field caesium magnetometer in order to target the archaeological excavations. We sampled infill from graves excavated under positive

– Comparison of synthetic magnetograms of dipoles with an illustrative case study.– Remanence explains different anomaly patterns of magnetic dipoles.– The remanence, therefore the total magnetisation, can point in any direction if not acquired in-situ.

– Magnetometer prospection of a Bronze Age burial ground in Armenia.– Natural remanent magnetisation is the chief cause of anomalies.– Prehistoric gold mining near Sotk.

Combining the records of different types of magnetometers to one magnetogram can be onerous. We introduce an alternative way to merge magnetograms of diverse magnetometers. The application of a high-pass filter on scalar magnetometer data resembles gradiometer data. This can be a fast and easy way to merge scalar magnetometer and fluxgate gradiometer data.