Trials and Tribulations with GPR Processing and Interpretation in Canadian Archaeology

Session Hosting Format: 
in-person session
Date/Time: 
Saturday, May 4, 2024 - 9:00am to 12:00pm
(CST)
Room: 
Florence
Organizer(s): 
  • William T.D. Wadsworth (UAlberta)
  • Andrew Martindale (UBC)
  • Colin Grier (Washington State University)
Contact Email: 
Session Description (300 word max): 

Increasingly, GPR surveys are employed throughout Canadian archaeology to suit a variety of purposes (e.g., locating unmarked graves, delineating buried strata or features, and mapping archaeological sites). Training field technicians to conduct GPR surveys is increasingly common; however, there is a large bottleneck in archaeologists who can process or interpret data. This panel discussion is focused on critically important (but often overlooked) aspects of ground-penetrating radar survey: managing challenging topography/environments, processing/filtering the raw data, and interpreting archaeological features from the final products. A central theme of these discussions will be data integration with other remote sensing techniques (i.e., LiDAR), processing software, and GIS databases. This panel discussion is meant to be an interactive exercise where the three facilitators will introduce the topics before breaking out into informal discussion groups. Although several computers with demo data will be provided, participants are encouraged to bring their own data, software, and problems to work through together during the interactive portion.