Seeing Past the Dirt
Using ground-penetrating radar to focus archaeological digs
By Sid Perkins
Behold the modern archaeologist in the field: no pick, no shovel, no whisk broom. On this day, the only equipment that’s apparent is a cart full of electronics, which the researcher is pushing back and forth over the ground. The activity recalls a homeowner mowing a lawn, but this is instead high-tech prospecting with ground-penetrating radar. A flickering screen on the cart reveals echoes of buried objects, reflections that may represent artifacts, structures, or other signs of civilizations long ago.
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Mapping out subsurface features with radar enables scientists to focus their excavations more narrowly than they ever could before. No more cursory, wide-ranging digs based on hunches that something interesting might turn up. Besides saving archaeologists a lot of digging, time, and money, ground-penetrating radar permits them to study sites that are considered off-limits to physical disturbances.