Acquisition, Processing and Interpretation Techniques for Ground-penetrating Radar Mapping of Buried Pit-structures in the American Southwest

Ground-penetrating radar was used successfully to discover and map buried archaeological sites containing pit-structures in the American Southwest. Sites tested contained different archaeological features, geological matrix, and varying deptlis of burial. These varying site conditions necessitated the application of different acquisition, data processing and interpretation techniques. With pit-structures buried between 50 cm and 2 m, high frequency antennas were used to collect data with 50 cm spaced transacts. Amplitude slice-maps were constructed that delineated floors, floor features and other related archaeological materials. In Bluff, Utah buried Anasazi pit houses were identified using the slice-map method and confirmed with subsurface coring. At the Valencia Site in Tucson, Arizona Hohokam pit dwellings were identified and mapped in caliche impregnated terrace gravels. At this site filtering techniques were applied during data processing because of the abundance of system and external noise. Manual mapping of features from two-dimensional sections was essential because of the abundance of metal garbage in the area that obscured much of the reflection data, precluding batch computer processing.