Simulated Underwater Acoustic Detection of Knapped Stone

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Acoustic methods for exploring the underwater landscape contribute to the effectiveness of underwater archaeology research, largely by allowing efficient mapping of the seafloor and sub-bottom. Detection and identification of specific materials and artifact types within archaeological landscapes is an important step in using this technology to efficiently identify and map archaeological sites. Ole Gron and others have noted that knapped flint appears to show a distinct signal in acoustic return data. To understand what causes this signal and how to identify it, we perform finite element simulations of the acoustic response of knapped stone in seawater and sediment. We create 3D models of individual lithics using small scale photogrammetry. We run a combined finite element and boundary element simulation to model the returned intensity of the lithics at frequencies ranging from 1 to 200 kHz. We systematically characterize the response from individual lithics by material and dimension, and of assortments of lithics by lithic density and seafloor coverage. These results will be compared with acoustic return data from previously mapped underwater archaeological sites as well as further experiments.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• SAA 2021: General Sessions

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33549