IMPROVING MULTI-TOOL SURVEYING EFFICIENCY FOR ARCHAEOLOGICAL GEOPHYSICS BY INTEGRATING GOOGLE EARTH

Traditional geophysical surveys at archaeological sites are often inefficient, requiring more than one field season to complete, and may thus be limited by funding and availability of field personnel. Our research is designed to meet the growing need for geophysical surveys to be more cost and time efficient, by creating a workflow that will expedite data acquisition, processing, and interpretation of subsurface features into a form more readily useable by archaeologists. Data collection took place within an archaeological site on the Akrotiri Peninsula in Cyprus in June of 2010 utilizing ground penetrating radar and magnetic gradiometry. While mostly all visible surface features have been mapped by archaeologists, there had been no previous work done to detect features in the subsurface. Upon completion of the processing and interpretation of the geophysical data, a methodology was developed for generating maps using Google Earth. Overlays are created using images of the processed data and are geo-referenced using differential global positioning system (dGPS) data. Creating a geographic information system (GIS) in Google Earth using geophysical data allows archaeologists to identify subsurface features in map view and results in a greater availability of the data. These maps, used in conjunction with dGPS data, allows for (a) features to be accurately located within a site area; (2) potential minimization of interpretation error by enabling archaeologists to readily determine the quality of a site prior to excavation and (c) a reduction in the chance of disturbance to archaeological features by providing a widely-distributable product.