Thursday, July 2, 2009

Applying some modern technology

Today we were fortunate to have a visit by Dr. Victor Thompson, also of the UWF Anthropology Department, who gave a demonstration of Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) equipment at our field school site, as well as an overview of a range of shallow geophysical techniques including soil resistivity and gradiometer survey. We were able to conduct a few limited transect surveys in the area where we have been finding the most mission-period artifacts on the bluff summit, and we were pleased to discover several areas of disturbed subsurface soil, at least one of which is fairly broad (see image below). It's impossible to say what the cause of these radar "anomalies" are until we check them directly, but at the very least we know something is creating a fairly distinctive signature underground in this area.

The students also worked on more brush clearing after finishing up three open shovel tests for the longer holiday weekend.

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