Application of seismic surface waves at a pre-Columbian settlement in Honduras

Luke, Barbara; Brady, James E.

doi:10.1002/(sici)1099-0763(199809)5:3<139::aid-arp101>3.0.co;2-o

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…Previously within the Maya region, archaeologists have employed geophysical prospecting techniques only outside the lowlands-for example, in highland El Salvador (Loker 1983;Sheets 1979) and eastern Honduras (Luke and Brady 1997;Sheets 1979), where soil, geological, and ecological conditions differ from those found in the Maya Lowlands. Within the Maya Lowlands, geophysi-cal prospecting techniques have been used to search for invisible settlement only at Chau Hiix, Belize (Sweely 1996); here the results were suggestive but not conclusive.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The “Invisible” Maya: Minimally Mounded Residential Settlement at Itzán, Petén, Guatemala

Johnston¹

2004

Latin Am. antiq.

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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.Through analyses of data recovered at Itzdn, Guatemala, this paper examines the architectural morphology and the probable functions of "invisible" building remains in the Maya Lowlands. Invisible building remains are buried, leave no surface traces, and cannot be detected during surface survey, which is the principal settlement detection technique employed by Mayanists. Data at Itzdn and other sites suggest that Maya invisible buildings are a more abundant settlement category than many archaeologists have supposed.A travis de informaci6n recuperada en Itzdn, Guatemala, examino la arquitectura y lasfunciones probables de las construcciones no visibles en las tierras bajas de los mayas. Los vestigios de las construcciones no visibles son completamente sepultados, y no pueden ser descubiertos mediante el reconocimiento de terreno, que es la base de la ticnica utilizada por los mayistas para establecer patrones de asentamiento. La informacidn de Itzdn y otros sitios sugiere que las construcciones no visibles Mayas son de una categoria residencial mds comdn que los arquedlogos han supuesto. For 50 years archaeologists have collected settlement data in the Maya Lowlands almost exclusively through surface survey.While it is true that subsurface testing has been an important component of many settlement surveys, generally it has been conducted with the goal of dating and establishing the function of surface-visible mounds rather than discovering buried architectural remains that leave no surface traces. Even as they rely on surface survey, archaeologists have expressed concern that culturally important components of the Maya settlement system could be buried and that surface-collected survey data, consequently, could be incomplete and nonrepresentative. In the literature, this possibility is described as the "invisible settlement" problem (settlement data have been collected predominantly through surface survey, archaeologists are expressing doubts about how representative those data may be. Partly in response to these concerns, study of the environmental and archaeological factors that affect the exposure (or the lack thereof) of settlement remains on landscapes has emerged during the last two decades as a major research topic (e.g.ing discoveries at the site of Itzain, Guatemala. Specifically, I examine the architecture and artifact assemblages of eight invisible structures, several of which are clustered in patio groups. As indicated by their architecture and artifacts, the structures are house remains. The discovery at ItzLin and other sites of invisible structures has important ramifications for Maya archaeology. "Invisible settlement" consists of largely or completely buried settleme...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The “Invisible” Maya: Minimally Mounded Residential Settlement at Itzán, Petén, Guatemala

Johnston¹

2004

Latin Am. antiq.

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“…() for example used the H/V method to retrieve information about the subsoil stratigraphy of a Roman theatre. Luke and Brady () used the two station spectral analysis to detect cavities not by shear‐wave velocity variation but by dispersion signatures.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rayleigh‐wave Resonance Analysis: a Methodological Test on a Viking Age Pit House

Wilken

Wunderlich

Majchczack³

et al. 2015

Archaeological Prospection

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Seismic surface-waves may show amplitude resonances at certain frequencies depending on the thickness and elastic parameters of near-surface layers. We investigate if resonance frequencies of Rayleigh-waves, (seismic surface-waves polarized in the vertical plane) can be used to prospect archaeological remains of small-scale buildings such as pit houses. Our test site is a newly detected Viking age village on the island of Föhr (north Germany) where we concentrated on one typical pit house. The results from resonance analysis are compared with magnetic data, ground penetrating radar (GPR) and classical seismic refraction measurements. The method of Rayleigh-wave resonance mapping used in this paper is based on the idea that Rayleigh-wave oscillations on top of anthropogenic structures will show different resonances than on undisturbed soil. We perform spectral analysis of these oscillations to provide information related to the seismic site response. We process single vertical component recordings and map the change in resonance frequency that can be related to the archaeological objects. The test showed that the pit house can be mapped by Rayleigh-wave resonance analysis with a horizontal resolution of~0.6 m. Corresponding computations of the depth of the pit house agree with the results from GPR, magnetic modelling and refraction seismics. A modelling study helped to understand the connection between subsoil shear-wave velocity model and the signal generated by the pit house. The progress of seismic field measurement is slow compared to GPR and magnetometry. However, since seismic methods are based on elastic subsoil parameters, it can be applied in cases where magnetic contrasts are low or GPR fails because of high electromagnetic wave absorption.seismics (Models C, D, F to A, B, E), a change in topsoil velocity (Models E, F), a change in both velocities with the impedance contrast between the two layers kept constant (Model B) and a decrease in the velocity of the stiffer layer (Model C). The spectra show resonance frequencies at about 70 Hz for the Model 2 outside the pit house (Model D) and 45 Hz for Model 1 inside the pit house (Model A), which correlates well with the observation and thus supports the resonance frequency approach.The following effects can be observed: (a) Models A, B, C, and D show a strong maximum in the vertical component together with a sharpFigure 7. (a) Seismic shot gathers from the SH refraction reference profile (position see Figure 3). Picked first arrival times are indicated by blue and red dots. (b) Shear-wave velocity model obtained by the wavefront method. Numbers 1 and 2 indicate the two reference models that correspond to inside and outside the pit. For comparison, the measured magnetic signal of the profile and the location of the modelled prism are shown in (c). 2015. On the ability of geophysical methods to image medieval turf buildings in Iceland. Archaeological Prospection 22(3): 171-186.

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“…A variety of seismic methods -reflection, refraction, surface wave, and shear wave-have been used successfully to characterize the underlying geology and anthropogenic modifications of various sites (Dalan and Bevan 2002;Luke and Brady 1998;Rabbel, Stuempel, and Woelz 2004;Stright 1986). Most of the studies employing refraction, however, did not realize the full potential of the first arrival data through multi-layer profile modeling.…”

Section: Seismic Refractionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seismic Refraction at Ancestral Puebloan Sites on the Pajarito Plateau, New Mexico

Nisengard¹,

Isaacson²,

Ferguson

et al. 2008

Journal of Field Archaeology

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Application of seismic surface waves at a pre-Columbian settlement in Honduras

Cited by 5 publications

References 3 publications

The “Invisible” Maya: Minimally Mounded Residential Settlement at Itzán, Petén, Guatemala

The “Invisible” Maya: Minimally Mounded Residential Settlement at Itzán, Petén, Guatemala

Rayleigh‐wave Resonance Analysis: a Methodological Test on a Viking Age Pit House

Seismic Refraction at Ancestral Puebloan Sites on the Pajarito Plateau, New Mexico

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