3d gpr imaging for archaeological prospection

Resum

Full characterizacion of archaelogical sites by conventional archaeological techniques can take years. Besides, drilling and excavations -the most often applied methods for archaeological assessmente- are ground-disturbing. Therefore, non-destructive geophysical techniques are used to map the shallow subsurface of smaller zones of interest for subsequent detailed excavations. Among these techniques, GPR offers high resolution, three-dimensional data visualization, velocity of acquisition and versatility. Main objectives of this dissertation are to show how the extra effort in data acquisition, refined methodology and processing can improve GPR imaging results, also try to answer the critical questions of how dense a GPR survey should be acquired and where are the resolution limits and bottlenecks of currently in archaelogy widely used GPR hardware and processing software. For fultilling those aims, experiments and study cases which have resolved real problems are presented and discussed in this document.