Here I will begin posting videos of the 2024-25 Workshop. Our first session is not until Dec. 6, but there are some basic tasks that all participants need to have done before that.
The basics of slicing 11_14_24
introduction to GPR Viewer 11_7_24
Here is my video to all of you on what I will expect prior to that first session together:
Oct 27, 2024 
Those who have completed this Advanced GPR Interpretation Workshop will be accredited and their geographic location and contact information will be posted here:
list of accredited advanced GPR interpreters
Some comments from previous workshop participants
Note: We will have another GPR workshop starting in December, 2024. We are now full, but I am putting a waiting list together in case someone drops out between now and December. If you are interested in attending, after reading the details below, please e-mail me at lconyers@du.edu and answer these questions below:
your name:
e-mail:
affiliation:
experience with GPR:
software that you use:
Objectives:
The workshop will include weekly group sessions (every Friday at 9:00 AM Mountain time) with small group on-line training and break-out interpretation sessions with the coordinators to be scheduled at times and days that are suitable for the participants. These smaller teams will work independently under the guidance of all three instructors to use techniques taught to the whole group, with each producing independent results using the methods available and that are discussed in advance. The whole group will then have the ability to learn from others’ work and add to our overall understanding of each site.
The overall goal each week will not be just robust interpretations, but an enhanced ability for GPR practitioners to arrive at results that can be communicated to colleagues, firms and agencies visually. These products can then also provide meaningful guidance for possible future testing, feature avoidance, mitigation, and resource management.
All sessions will be conducted on Zoom so that participants may share screens, comment and annotate others’ work and show their own results. Sessions will be recorded and posted on-line.
The goal at the end of the workshop is to have all participants arrive at not just the location of buried features, but also to be comfortable using a variety of processing and interpretation procedures based on the questions asked. In this way each participant will derive their own personal “best practices” to become cultural analysts using geophysics that can bring them far beyond technicians who locate “anomalies”.
Some of the sites to be studied with specific methods to be used:
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Puebloan: Chaco Canyon, New Mexico (basic slice mapping)
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Mayan: Chichen Itza, Mexico (voids and non-reflective units)
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Pre-Clovis: Coopers Ferry, Idaho (fluvial stratigraphy and paleoenvironment)
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Late Ice Age: Coastal Portugal (fluvial units with 3-D analysis of units and associated artifacts)
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Hohokam: Arizona (buried canals and 3-D analysis with adobe complexity)
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Historic English Colonial: Connecticut (vertical incisions of strata by cellars)
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Bronze Age: Chios, Greece (complex migration prior to slicing with 2-D analysis)
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Neanderthal: Atapuerca, Spain (cave void spaces and phase changes)
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Roman: southwest France (frequency filtering and multiple occupation layers)
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Pleistocene hominid prints at Laetoli, Tanzania (micro-GPR)
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Historical: Graves in New Hampshire (with all the complexity found in burials)
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Archaic: Poverty Point, Louisiana (analysis of multiple stacked units)
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Archaic: Sambaqui Shell Mounds, coastal Brazil (complex shell stratigraphy and associated floors and faunal remains)
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King Richard III: Leicester, England car park (urban noise to filter out and find the king’s resting place)
Here are the videos of workshops from 2020-2022:
The 2021-2022 Advanced GPR Interpretation Workshop. Many thanks to GSSI and California State University Sonoma (as well as other sponsors) for making this workshop happen.
This year Lauren Couey (GSSI) was my co-workshop organizer and Radan specialist.
Here are the recordings to the workshop sessions:
Background sessions:
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Dec. 7, 2021: basics on what to do first with GPR data when returning to the field: Time zero, basic processing, reflections, how to describe reflections, and how to determine velocity from hyperbola fitting.
https://mediaspace.du.edu/media/t/1_tv7g1tff
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Dec 15, 2021 : Short session on GPR Viewer with more work on velocity, topographic adjustments, how to produce images from profiles, how to annotate those images for reports. Also Surfer basics on gridding, image making and annotations of maps
https://mediaspace.du.edu/media/Dec.%2015%2C%202020%3A%20Short%20session%20on%20GPR%20Viewer%20and%20Surfer/1_ztyjud89
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Dec 17, 2021: Basics on amplitude slicing. How to determine slice thicknesses, and what resolution is in various frequencies. How to determine what a map is showing, and how to adjust maps for various amplitudes. Also basics on comparing profiles to maps, and how to make those in both Surfer and Radan:
https://mediaspace.du.edu/media/Amplitude+slicing/1_1zqxorop
The General Sesssions:
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Jan 7, 2022 First day of workshop…introductions and where we are going with Larry ideas. Introduction to the Ecuador Inca Temple dataset.
https://mediaspace.du.edu/media/Jan%207%2C%202022%20First%20day%20of%20workshop%E2%80%A6introductions%20and%20where%20we%20are%20going%20with%20Larry%20ideas.%20/1_bmdxuopy
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Jan 14, 2022: Ecuador grid and introduction to frequency filtering.
https://mediaspace.du.edu/media/Jan%2014%2C%202022%3A%20%20Ecuador%20grid%20and%20introduction%20to%20frequency%20filtering/1_qk40pjsl
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Jan 21, 2022: Baudes, France and introduction to Tanuri site (frequency filtering for Roman villa and Medieval church).
https://mediaspace.du.edu/media/Date%3A%20Jan%2021%2C%202022%20Baudes%2C%20France%20%20and%20introduction%20to%20Tanuri%20site%20in%20Arizona/1_ltwxf9of
Jan 28, 2022: Tanuri, Arizona: a 900 MHz data set in both x and y of a “pre-Classic” Hohokam house.
https://mediaspace.du.edu/media/t/1_f8u6f5rm
Here is a video of the pit house
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FYa4dNruJ7nuu7JkrHWWqcq9n0Q971f-/view?usp=sharing
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Feb. 4, 2022: Late Pleistocene Portugal: mapping fluvial channels in the context of a Late Ice Age hunting site.
Below is the recording of special session on picking the bedrock horizon, and then producing 3-D images of that buried surface, which is a map of the ancient landscape at the end of the Ice Age:
https://mediaspace.du.edu/media/t/1_9y0afwp7
This is the full session where everyone shows their results. Very interesting mix of methods from many participants. Also an introduction to next week, which is a merger of GPR and magnetics:
https://mediaspace.du.edu/media/Portugal%203-D%20surface/1_85zzaf02
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Feb 11, 2022: Connecticut USA: a 17th century farming community that was covered in flood sand about 1705. Integration of GPR analysis and magnetics.
Below is the short session on merging magnetics and GPR (the “Larry” method of comparing magnetic readings to GPR profiles and amplitude maps, which is very “non traditional”):
https://mediaspace.du.edu/media/Special%20session%20on%20merging%20magnetic%20readings%20and%20GPR%20profiles%20and%20maps/1_x3dn7gse
Here is our group analysis of features from Hollister, with many different data processing and interpretation methods. With an introduction by Dave Leslie on the recent excavations from the site, which provide an important template forthe interpretations
https://mediaspace.du.edu/media/Hollister%20site%20merging%20GPR%20and%20magnetics/1_1ut2gwxa
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Feb 18, 2022: Laetoli footprints: famous Tanzania hominid site with a 2.6 GHZ antenna for very high resolution
a short session on how to process and interpret the prints:
https://mediaspace.du.edu/media/Footprints%20some%20basic%20GPR%20thoughts/1_cv9aysnu
Our joint interpretation of the prints, with many different methods (some good, some not so great…but good tries!) that we used:
https://mediaspace.du.edu/media/GMT20220218-160005_Recording_gallery_3200x1700.mp4/1_874ysok4
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Feb. 25, 2022: Cueva Peluda Spain: Neanderthal cave where the ceiling and floor both must be mapped, and the volume of the void space determined.
Some background on methods to pick horizons, convert time to depth and then produce 3-D volumes and images of the cave:
https://mediaspace.du.edu/media/cave%20velocity%20analyses%20and%203-D%20volumes/1_frtwbb3m
Our joint interpretation today of the cave with estimates of the volume. Also an introduction to the Rillito Fan project for next week
https://mediaspace.du.edu/media/cave%20analysis%20of%20floor%20and%20ceiling%2C%20and%20introduction%20to%20Rillito%20Fan/1_t9pa2ewu
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Mar 4, 2022: Rillito Fan, Arizona: an irrigation system associated with an “Early Agricultural” village on the banks of the Santa Cruz River near Tucson.
short session on placing the canal into space and producing 3-D images
https://mediaspace.du.edu/media/canal%20picks%20and%203-D%20images/1_7r43lv5z
The analysis of the canal, and introduction to the mystery grid
https://mediaspace.du.edu/media/canal%20analysis%20and%20introduction%20to%20mystery%20grid/1_rsjzj11i
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Mar 11, 2022: The mystery grid. A nice GPR and magnetic grid from a spot in southern England. The final exam!
Results of the mystery grid analyses
https://mediaspace.du.edu/media/final%20workshop%20day%20with%20results%20of%20the%20mystery%20grid/1_02aeo483
Here are the participants of the 2022 Workshop.
Andrew Heller |
SEARCH Inc. |
Claiborne Sea |
U of Alabama |
David Cranford |
Assistant State Archaeologist, NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources |
David Givens |
Director of Arcaheology, Jamestown Rediscovery |
David Leslie |
Archaeological and Historical Services Inc. |
Ethan Ryan |
Project Manager, Cannon Heritage |
Gano Perez |
GIS Cultural Specialist, Muscogee (Creek) Nation |
Iraida Rodriguez |
NPS Southern Arizona Office |
Jean-Christophe Ouellet |
Dept. of Anthropology, University of Montreal |
Jennie Sturm |
Statistical Research, Inc & University of New Mexico |
Jeremy Pye |
PI, Cultural Resources Analysts, Inc. |
Jonathan Alperstein |
Dartmouth College |
Kevin Nolan |
Ball State University |
Mary Beth Fitts |
Assistant State Archaeologist, NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources |
Molly Cannon |
Director Mountain West Center, Utah State University |
Robert Chartrand |
Chartrand Geoarchaeological Solutions, LLC |
Scott W. Hammerstedt |
Oklahoma Archaeological Survey; U. of Oklahoma |
Seth Van Dam |
Gray & Pape Heritage Management |
Sheldon Skaggs |
Bronx Community College City University New York |
William Chadwick |
Indiana University of Pennsylvania |
Bryan Mischke |
Cal State Sonoma, California |
Michael Konzak |
Cal State Sonoma, California |
Maria Iancu |
Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK. |
Zafeiria Roumelioti |
University of Patras, Greece |
Evrim Tütünsatar |
Isparta Uygulamalı Bilimler Üniversitesi, Turkey |
Thomas Fenn |
U of Oklahoma |
Sean Farrell |
SEARCH Inc. |
Christopher Peske |
Sonoma State University |
Dana Kollmann |
Townson University |
Samantha Kirkley |
Southern Utah University |
Peter Masters |
Cranfield University, UK |
Katherine Beames |
U. of Alberta |
Francisco Peralta Belmonte |
Asunción, Paraguay |