Landscape Scale Ground Penetrating Radar and Magnetometry at Tel Shimron, Jezreel Valley, Israel

Summary

Situated in Israel’s Jezreel Valley, Tel Shimron holds the remains of occupations from the Early Bronze Age through to the 20th century. It is one of the largest tels in the region, but had not been excavated before this summer. The Tel Shimron Excavation project aims to investigate tel stratigraphy and better understand regional dynamics with the Galilean Hills and the Mediterranean agricultural economy. We began in 2016 by conducting geophysical surveys over much of the tel to investigate the uppermost strata. Desiccated soils, modern constructions, steep terrain, and tall vegetation in many areas severely limited options for instrumentation and data collection strategies. Our choice to use ground penetrating radar and magnetometry over 6 hectares of the tel proved to be very successful. The combination of features identified in the geophysical data and recent excavations have revealed occupations from the Middle Bronze Age, Byzantine, Mamluk, and early 20th century. This poster illustrates these results and explores how features and stratigraphic layers are manifest in GPR and magnetometry data.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22439