Anyone new to this blog or geophysics in archaeology is recommended to read the material on the “Geophysical survey in archaeology” page.
Firstly, an apology to those to whom I said “no, we’ve done that” this afternoon when we hadn’t. Oops.
Just a quick posting tonight as it is late. The mag team completed an excellent nine grids in Church Meadow. They are half-way along the field already (Figure 1).
Figure 1: the mag results in Church Meadow.
Sadly, the most obvious things are the two pipelines, and the dark stripes across one grid square. The latter is our old friend the frozen sensor. Way back during the survey in the Park we once managed twelve grids in a day only to have to re-do a bunch of them thanks to the sensor. Of the archaeology, we cam most clearly see the edge of Watling Street heading SSE towards the Chester Gate. The ditch we picked-up on Sunday appears to be the SW edge of an enclosure, possibly part of the nunnery.
The GPR crew managed an excellent five grids today despite only having one battery. Figure 2 shows the entire GPR survey in the theatre field to date.
Figure 2: the GPR survey to date.
I’d like to give a big thank you to Jimmy Adcock of Guideline Geo for going above and beyond in finding a second battery for us as one of ours has died. As can be seen from the figure, we are within spitting distance of finishing this field, and it would be a shame if we missed that target due to a dodgy battery.
The res team made it to the fence line. We would have finished the new transect if it wasn’t for my incompetence (see the opening paragraph!). Figure 3 shows the res survey in the theatre field.
Figure 3: the resistance survey to date.
The funny little notch in the top by the fence is my little oppsie. Figure 4 shows the northern area with a high-pass filter applied to the new data.
Figure 4: the new area (high pass filtered).
The most obvious feature in the new data is the aqueduct showing as a very low resistance feature in white cutting across the transect. There are, however, other buildings showing very subtly in the data that are very hard to pull out in an overall plot. They show best in the thumbnails as one is putting together the data in TerraSurveyor. Apart from the little partial which I’ll sort out tomorrow (actually, later today!), the Earth Resistance meter will move into Church Meadow tomorrow to try and retrieve a plan of St Mary du Pre denied the mag by the pipelines.
Just four days left!
