Interpreting a Deserted Medieval Village through Geophysical Data

Summary

Ground-penetrating radar is often used as a way to collect from reflections from buried features, which are then processed into colorized horizontal amplitude maps to visualize these features in the horizontal plane. While this is a good way find and visualized features in "batch mode" there are other less commonly employed methods to process the data. The Castles in Communities project in Ballintubber, Ireland project has collected GPR data sets from multiple years to produce standard GPR images, integrated with magnetic gradiometer maps and three-dimensional isosurface renderings. In this way very different types of features, both architectural and agricultural are visible in large areas outside the castle walls. This shows where the medieval village was located, as well as other associated structures and agricultural fields. In addition within the castle walls a number of buildings, a church and other work areas, now totally invisible on the surface, have been identified. A number of these archaeological features have been excavated to confirm and refine the geophysical results.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 17372