Archaeological Investigations

Geophysical techniques being Non-Destructive in nature play a vital role in Archaeological Investigations. Conventional Archaeological Investigations are carried out by manually digging the sites layer by layer while taking care the fact that the site / underneath features must remain undisturbed. This very nature of conventional archaeological investigations makes them extremely slow and much expensive. Moreover, recovery of details for the undisturbed underground features, which is the most important requirement of archaeological investigations is also compromised quite often due to non availability of sufficient time for such type of investigations. Non-Destructive geophysical techniques are very helpful for archaeological investigations as they have the capability of providing the precise subsurface data without any digging in the shortest time span as compared to the conventional Archaeological Investigations. Using Geophysical Techniques a detailed subsurface image of the area to be investigated can be provided which can be interpreted and connected to delineate the sub-surface features.

Some of the advantages of NDT Geophysical Investigations over the conventional Archaeological Investigation are given as under:

  • Archaeological Investigations are destructive and slow as site is excavated in a systematic manner. Geophysical Investigations on the other hand are non-destructive and rapid.
  • All the archaeological sites such as historical buildings, heritage sites cannot be excavated and hence conventional archaeological investigations can not be carried out for such areas. For such sites, Geophysical Investigations can be easily carried out because of its non- destructive and rapidly employable nature.
  • Based on the outputs of Geophysical Investigations which can map and delineate the buried buildings, wells, voids, tunnels, walls, Archaeologists can take a decision to carry out limited digging activities as per his priority and need not dig the entire site, which makes it very cost effective and time saving.
  • Outputs of Geophysical Investigations can be stored in Data Base and can be used for future excavation works as per requirement of Archaeologists.

ORIZON is equipped to carry out following Geophysical Techniques which are used for mapping and delineation of subsurface feature, artifacts for Archaeological application:

  • Ground Penetrating Radar Survey
  • Electro-Magnetic Survey
  • Gravity and Magnetic Survey
  • Electrical Imaging Survey