Appreciation post: I was wrong about ground-penetrating radar

For ages, I thought GPR was just a fancy toy for big university digs, not something a local group like ours in Tucson could use. We stuck to old-school test pits and guesswork for years. Then last fall, a team from the university let us borrow their unit for a weekend survey at a suspected Hohokam site. The scans showed clear, rectangular outlines about 30 centimeters down that we never would have dug for. It saved us weeks of pointless digging and let us focus on the actual structures. Has anyone else had their mind changed by a specific tech on a small project?

3 comments

3 Comments

eric_murray261mo ago

Our group spent two years digging in the wrong spot before we tried a magnetometer.

nina_jenkins1mo ago

Start by saying I've heard that kind of story a lot lol. Is it really that deep though? Seems like a lot of groups overthink these old sites when a little common sense and a map would do the same job.

patricia6851mo ago

Heard a similar story from a buddy who volunteers on a farmstead survey back east. They were mapping old foundation lines with just tapes and guesses. Someone brought in a cheap drone for photos. The overhead shots from different angles showed a whole other wall line they had totally missed in the brush. Changed how they do their initial walkovers now. Simple tech, big difference.