Geophysical Investigation at the Falling Creek Ironworks, an Early Industrial Site in Virginia

Abstract

A geophysical investigation was conducted at the site of the Falling Creek Ironworks (1619-1622), the first iron production facility in North America. Electrical resistance and magnetic field gradient surveys were conducted over the site of the seventeenth century ironworks. Additionally, groundpenetrating radar was used to investigate areas under an existing roadway. Linear and rectangular anomalies that appear in the resistance data may be caused by architectural features, possibly shops or domestic structures associated with the ironworks. Several low-amplitude magnetic anomalies that appear in the data appear to be cultural in origin, and may be caused by features associated with the ironworks. A number of high-amplitude magnetic anomalies appear in the magnetic field gradient data that are thought to be associated with iron production, including extensive slag deposits and the possible location of the blast furnace. Ground-penetrating radar data shows an anomalous reflection in the vicinity of the suspected blast furnace, which is partially beneath the modern roadway.

Geophysics in support of industrial archaeology in a challenging environment: Shade iron furnace, Pennsylvania, USA

“…Of these, magnetic, electrical resistivity and ground-penetrating radar (GPR) surveys are commonly most successful (Wynn, 1986;Sharma, 1997;Kvamme, 2000). Significantly for the present study, it is apparent that archaeogeophysical case studies in general, and those of iron workings in particular, have generally been poorly documented in North America (Jones, 2001) compared with Europe (Presslinger et al, 1986;Smekalova et al, 1986;Vernon et al, 1998;Crew, 2002), for instance. The reasons for this discrepancy are multifold, but we specifically observe that archaeological sites in North America are particularly regularly located in remote areas in woodland or other unfavourable terrain.…”

Object-Based Image Analysis of Ground-Penetrating Radar Data for Archaic Hearths

“…Software advances in the 1990s and 2000s led to the development of processing tools that allow for horizontal depth slicing and 3D imaging of GPR data [64]. In the southeastern United States, research-driven geoarchaeological investigations employing GPR (along with other remote sensing techniques) have been focused mainly on historic (e.g., [65][66][67][68][69]), Mississippian and/or Protohistoric (e.g., [70][71][72][73][74][75][76]), and Woodland (e.g., [70,72,77,78]) sites. Geophysical investigations in the southeast have rarely been focused solely on Archaic sites ( [79] is a notable exception).…”

Geochemical insight during archaeological geophysical exploration through in situ X‐ray fluorescence spectrometry

“…However, an understanding of geochemistry could add significant archaeological value, particularly where a given practice is linked to a specific chemical element (e.g. industrial processes that leave a diagnostic abundance of marker elements; Millard, ; Jones, ; McKenzie & Pulford, ; White & Dungworth, ). While geochemical analyses are routine in archaeometry, applied to study the composition of (for example) glass (Aidona, Sarris, Kondopopulou, & Sanakis, ; Falcone, Renier, & Vertià, ), paint (Bonizzoni, Bruni, Guglielmi, Milazzo, & Neri, ) and ceramic (Aidona, Sarris, Kondopopulou, & Sanakis, ; Cultrone, Molina, Grifa, & Sebastián, ), their use in archaeological exploration has not been widely reported.…”