by Lawrence B. Conyers
6 responses to “Editorial on GPR and geophysical archaeology in 2026”
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Hey Larry,
It’s interesting to be able to directly respond to this editorial here, so let’s give it a go.I must say that I agree, generally, with your concerns though am less pessimistic. We have GPR systems from MALA, GSSI, Proseq, ImpulseRadar, and KONTUR and I’ve used all of the manufacturer software as well as GPR-Slice, ReflexW. What has struck me about our adoption of Geolitix, isn’t it’s speed, or that it’s cloud based (nice, but I have 64 GB of ram and 32 cores, hardware/ speed wasn’t a limitation). Geolitix works with ALL of our systems and is organic in a way that traditional software isn’t. There are new features, bug fixes (of which I have reported no shortage), rolling out continuously. I’ve even had a few requested features added. If it doesn’t do what you want, maybe just ask? They are surprisingly willing and able to meet you in the middle. Oh and bonus points that I don’t have to go to IT every time there’s a software update. I do wish that it offered an offline version (similar to MALA Vision) for those particularly remote projects, but not yet.
Ironically, the vast majority of GPR data I am asked to review was collected when no intent on slicing it. Much of the geotechnical work that we do starts and ends with radargrams (refection profiles). I actually encourage collecting data more systematically (with baselines, please) so that one *could* slice the data, if they wanted to.
In an archaeological sense when we’re excavating a feature, we’re not excavating in profiles (though we do record them), we’re excavating in planview, peeling back the earth layer by layer and recording what we see as we go. So, while I am merely speculating, I imagine for many archaeologists slices just *make sense* in a way that profiles do not. This over reliance on slices over profiles is probably more deeply rooted in the background of the user. Additionally, most clients don’t know how to make heads or tails of a profile, but show them the rectangular footprint of a building and they just *get it*.
I completely agree that both profiles and slices should be an integral part of the interpretation process, but I think the issue may be related to a lower barrier to entry for geophysics and GPR specifically and therefore how many more people can *do* geophysics than ever before. How many archaeological projects have been lost to a PUL jockey with radar and a can of spray paint? Entirely too many.
For what it’s worth, my bugbear is the over reliance on GNSS when collecting geophysical data, I think the integration of GNSS into GPR systems is the single worst thing to happen to data quality. It gives operators a false sense of accuracy and has been detrimental to field methods as a consequence.
Finally, I appreciate what you’ve built here, it is a breath of fresh air, and one day I hope to find the time to actually contribute something other than a few thoughts on your editorial.
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thanks Alex. How nice to get a comment from someone who shares my same frustration with GPR! I just had a really good talk with some folks in Poland who are developing a type of multi-spectral GPR system similar to the step frequency systems, but modulated between many frequencies. They wanted to show me just the slice-maps, and when I asked them why, they said their customers only want those images, as the 2-D profiles are too complicated for them! So they had not spent much time working with their software on the images that you and I agree are the most important! Here we go again…it is the same story. And all the GNSS data in the world are not going to get you better data!
You have great stories Alex, and I we are on the same team!
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Nice editorial. I can appreciate the points having just done a little training session on Geolitix. The best point is the value of simply processed amplitude plots and their integral interpretation along with slice maps. The importance of navigating around slice maps AND amplitude plots simultaneously. Good contribution to those of us looking at tools and approaches.
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Thanks Tom….you are making the same case as Martin in the last message, and I get it! NOW our jobs are to make sure that people who interpret GPR have all the good tools they need, and that we can teach newcomers how to use them with a minimum amount of grief!
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While we are talking about Geolitix here, we shouldn’t forget that the old standards, e.g. ReflexW, are still in widespread use and are still being updated. While their interfaces are sometimes difficult and less intuitive than modern minds prefer, that shouldn’t detract from the considerable experience and power that lurks ‘under the bonnet’.
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Thanks Martin…all very true. ReflexW is something people on your side of the Atlantic use much, and that is great. It is NOT very friendly in producing 2-D profiles that can be interpreted, however. Which was my point, as all the software is focused on amplitude slice-maps these days! They are much more fun and easy to interpret….
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