The Study Of Ground Penetrating Radar Attribute Technology For Archaeological Prospection

Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) can successfully describe and map buried archaeological interest in the subsurface based on changes in the electro-magnetic properties of the investigated materials. Comparing that2-D GPR profiles can supply intuitive and effective subsurface information in simple or relative simple situations, results of3-D analysis are highly effective to identify the size, shape, and location of buried cultural remains at different depths. However. GPR analysis often depends on a good deal of interpretive experience, so we evaluate the applicability and the effectiveness of the GPR attribute analysis for archaeological purposes, which was originally developed to improve the quality and efficiency of3-D data interpretation on petroleum industry.We tested the new technology on GPR archaeological data obtained in the river harbor area of the Aquileia Archaeological Park, Italy, Maoshan site, and ancient Nanzhao castle-site, China respectively. In Aquileia, cultural heritage of the Roman imperial period is buried at different depths beneath a silty loam layer at an average depth not greater than300cm, and it is always difficult to describe and map irregular superimposed and interconnected structures for GPR record with extremely poor signal to noise due to chaotic subsurface conditions in ancient urban settings, but the study performed has shown that attribute results can improve the imaging and characterization of archaeological site under complex subsurface conditions and deeper archaeological information can be attainable through attribute analysis without masked by shallower diffuse scattering zones. Besides, complex attribute analysis of GPR data allows enhancing the precision in target detection and provides more details about the buried canoe and the burial environment in the Maoshan site. Moreover, comparative analysis on GPR data obtained to map ancient wall, ancient kiln, and ancient tomb at Nanzhao castle-site, demonstrate that different attribute characteristics should be adopted for different archaeological targets’prospection in the same large archaeological site. In the study, a multi-attribute approach is used to characterize the subsurface through several attribute categories, including instantaneous, section and volume attributes applied to quantities related not only to the reflection amplitude, but also to frequency and phase or other more complex parameters.