Advances in GPR data acquisition and analysis for archaeology

Abstract

The primary objective of this study is to evaluate the applicability and the effectiveness of ground-penetrating radar (GPR) to identify a thin burnt soil layer, buried more than 2 m below the topographic surface at the Liangzhu Site, in Southeastern China. The site was chosen for its relatively challenging conditions of GPR techniques due to electrical conductivity and to the presence of peach tree roots that produced scattering. We completed the data acquisition by using 100 and 200 MHz antennas in TE and TM broadside and cross-polarized configurations. In the data processing and interpretation phase, we used GPR attribute analysis, including instantaneous phase and geometrical attributes. Validation analysis ground-truthing performed after the geophysical surveys, validated the GPR imaging, confirmed the electrical conductivity and relative dielectric permittivity (RDP) measurements performed at different depths, and allowed a reliable quantitative correlation between GPR results and subsurface physical properties. The research demonstrates that multiple antenna configurations in GPR data acquisition combined with attribute analysis can enhance the ability to characterize prehistoric archaeological remains even in complex subsurface conditions.

Detecting thin layer by using different seismic geophones and special processing technique at an archaeological site in Southeastern China

“…The present work demonstrates that a proper combination of data acquisition and processing analysis techniques for both GPR [Zhao et al, 2015] and seismic can overcome the limits of standard GPR and seismic techniques and successfully image low-contrast and thin cultural targets such as contacts between clayey soils and rammed sandy soils, which are subsurface conditions frequently met at prehistoric sites.…”

“…The study area is on top of an artificial hill, making the water level deeper, we were able to drill 2,4 m going through the thin layer as shown in Fig. 6, we choose the place of drilling on the point that crosses our seismic survey line with the attribute technique of GPR survey line by Zhao [Zhao et al, 2015], to be used for comparing our result with GPR results as shown in Fig. 7.…”

“…According to [Zhao et al, 2015], they calculated the instantaneous phase of the GPR data obtained with different configurations to focus on the buried layer and enhance the performance in tar- get detection. The use of the local standard deviations, based on the instantaneous phase attribute to make the interpretation easier and more constrained is shown in Fig.…”

“…We tried different geophones and processing techniques to evaluate the effect of high resolution shallow seismic exploration applied to detect a thin soil layer at an archaeological site. The broader frequency bandwidth is one of the advantages of the use of cable geophones, which can obvi- [Zhao et al, 2015]). …”

Interpolation methods for recovering the sampling values of GRP data

“…Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) is a widely used method to investigate the underground archaeological and geological structures [3], [17]. The use of GPR in researches and applications has recently been increasing, because it can explore and detect the underground structures quickly and accurately.…”