Annual NPS archaeological geophysics workshop

MIDWEST ARCHEOLOGICAL CENTER
Current Archeological Prospection Advances for Non-destructive Investigations in the 21st Century
May 23-27, 2011
LOCATION: Palo Alto Battlefield National Historical Park,
Cameron County, Texas

DESCRIPTION: This workshop is designed to provide a practical application of geophysical equipment and aerial photographic techniques available for the identification, evaluation, and ultimately, the conservation and protection of cultural resources. The field exercises associated with the course will concentrate on the application of these techniques to archeological investigations. Instruction will be given in the use, processing, and interpretation of data from magnetometers, conductivity meters, resistivity meters, ground penetrating radar, metal detectors, and magnetic susceptibility instruments and their applications to non-destructive subsurface investigations. The major emphasis of the training will be on the field use of the equipment. Instruction will also be offered in the use of and interpretation of aerial photographic techniques, and in the use of low altitude large scale aerial reconnaissance.

For more information and application form: http://www.nps.gov/history/mwac/

Field geology session at the International Symposium on Archaeometry

I want to be sure you are aware of the session on

Field Archaeology (remote sensing and geophysical prospecting, sampling and field walking strategies, in situ observations of preservation, site monitoring)

to be held at the International Symposium on Archaeometry (http://isa2010.cas.usf.edu/) next May in Tampa.

This session is being co-organized by Luis Barba and myself (Rob Sternberg).

Please consider submitting an abstract. The deadline is 1 Dec. 2009.


Photo: Rob with student Ali planning out some magnetometer traverses at an Etruscan archaeological site.

Stream Time Team America

from http://www.pbs.org/opb/timeteam/sites/ftjames/diary_meg.php

I'm still catching up from my time away. One of the things I'd like to do is watch the episodes of Time Team America. But I can do that because they are streamable from PBS. Fort James, Range Creek, and Philadelphia - here I come.

Sub Ground Imaging offers free geophysics

I'm away in Europe for 6 weeks, so you won't see quite so much of me here. At the moment, I'm doing archaeometry and magnetometry at the Poggio Colla Etruscan site near Florence.

But via the ISAP litserv, and speaking of geophysics, a nice message from Sub Ground Imaging in southern England(superfluous capitalizations removed):

If you are managing an educational or other non-profit archaeological project,
and are interested in our services, please feel free to contact us. We may very
well be both able and willing to assist you. We will consider donating our
geophysics services free of charge to worthy projects that benefit education or
further the knowledge of British Archaeology.

Why as a commercial concern would we do this?That is simple. We ourselves have a keen interest in archaeology and understand the importance of its contribution to the history of our country. We also understand the importance of state of the art techniques and resources being available to educational projects and to non-profit
archaeological groups and societies.If you feel your project could benefit from our assistance please drop us a line with a brief outline of your project. We will be pleased to help any project we feel to be both genuine, and worthy.

Welcome, Time Team America

I enjoyed watching the first episode of Time Team America on PBS last night. I've never seen the UK show on which it is based. The program has a nice web site, where you can stream last night's show. On yesterday's episode, the team was trying to find evidence for the European colonization of Roanoke Island, North Carolina.

The show started out with some magnetometry, showing the very Bartington instrument I had been checking out for a proposal yesterday, and Meg Watters, the team geophysicist, running gpr. Personally, I'd explain magnetometry a little differently, but why quibble (except for the fact that I am an academic, so a professional quibbler). The archaeologist at the site was Nick Lucketti, of the First Colony Foundation, whom I did a small archaeomagnetic job for seven years ago. I also met Eric Deetz, another member of the Time Team, on that same trip to the Jamestown area. The show recalled to me some criticism of the Time Team Program that these three-day site visits are not how archaeology works, and I can see that criticism. The finds were relatively slim, although, as Nick said, more European household artifacts than had been found for some years. Still, this seems like a good way to excite the public about the possibilities of archaeology, and the application of scientific methods.

Magnetism and archaeology

Archaeomagnetic sampling in the Podere Funghi

2009 Joint Assembly
American Geophysical Union
The Meeting of the Americas

24–27 May 2009
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

The scientific program can be viewed online.

Yours truly has co-convened the following session for the Geomagnetism and Paleomagnetism section:

Magnetism and Other Geophysical Techniques Applied to Archaeology

Conveners: R Sternberg, Franklin & Marshall College; A Chauvin, Université de Rennes; S Lengyel, Illinois State Museum

Session description: Magnetism is used in archaeology in several ways: archaeomagnetism, or the remanent magnetization of archaeological materials; use of magnetic properties for determining archaeological provenance; magnetic surveying at archaeological sites, and use of magnetic susceptibility on the surface and subsurface at archaeological sites. This session invites submissions on any of these topics, especially involving novel approaches, or the application of other geophysical methods to archaeology.

The presentations in this program:

Monday Morning, 25 May, 8 am - posters

Archaeomagnetic Study performed on Early Medieval Buildings from western France
A Chauvin, P Lanos, P Dufresne, S Blain, P Guibert, C Oberlin, C Sapin

Near Surface Magnetic Survey for Investigating the Cultural Relics in Suchon, Gongju, Korea
M R Islam, K Tiampo, M Suh, T F Abdallatif

Magnetic Susceptibility of Ancient and Modern Potsherds Using a Fast, Cheap and Portable Probe
P W Glover

Magnetic Fingerprinting of Central Mediterranean Obsidian Source Groups
I Weaver, R Sternberg, R H Tykot

Tuesday Morning, 26 May, 10:30 am – oral presentations

European Archaeomagnetism: Progress and Problems
M E Evans, G Hoye

Regional Archeomagnetic Model for Europe for the Last 3000 Years: Application to Dating.
F Pavón-Carrasco, M L Osete, J M Torta, L R Gaya-Piqué

The Mesoamerica Secular Variation Curve. A continuous research since 1999.
A M Soler-Arechalde, C I Caballero-Miranda, A Gogichaichvili, L Beramendi-Orosco, G Gonzalez-Hernández, J Urrutia-Fucugauchi

Dating Post-Medieval Archaeology: Which Global Geomagnetic Field Model to use?
A Lodge, N Suttie, M Korte, M Hill, R Holme

The Donegal Sign Tree: A Local Legend Confirmed with Holographic Radar and 3-D Magnetics
T Bechtel, M Cassidy, M Inagaki, C Windsor, L Capineri, P Falorni, A Bulleti, S Valentini, G Borgioli, S Ivashov, A Zhuravlev, V Razewig, I Vasiliev, E Bechtel

3-D Modelling of Magnetic Data from an Archaeological Site in Northwestern Tlaxcala State, Mexico
R E Chavez, D L Argote, G Cifuentes, A Tejero, E Camara

Archaeometric Prospection Using Electrical Survey Predictive Deconvolution (ESPD)
P W Glover