GEOPHYSICAL AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF THE SHALLOW SUBSURFACE AT FT. KASKASKIA

Fort Kaskaskia is a protected Illinois historical site that was constructed by the French army in 1760 however, the fort’s construction was never completed. In 1765 the fort was occupied by the British military, and in 1803 the U.S. army was stationed there (Orser & Karamanski 1977). This project aims to detect shallow geophysical anomalies that may indicate buried artifacts in and around the state historic site. Part of this project was focused on investigating previous anomalies that were found north of the fort using a magnetic survey (Weymouth & Woods). The investigation was conducted over several months which included historical, field, and laboratory research. By combining Electromagnetic Induction (EMI), and Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) we attempted to locate archeologically important structures in the shallow subsurface. Using the programs Surfer 9 and Radan we processed the data by statistical analysis, and signal processing to improve the signal to noise ratio which greatly increased the resolution of the maps we then created. Our field surveys found several interesting anomalies which support the belief that there are buried artifacts that were left behind by the inhabitants of the fort in “The New World”.