From hectares to square kilometres; Lessons learned from large scale infrastructure projects
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2019-08-18

Throughout most of the history of the application of geophysical techniques to archaeological sites, commercial projects have been limited to a site-specific discipline. Recent technological advancements have allowed for more rapid collection of geophysical data on landscape-wide scales, which has expanded the ability of geophysical survey to be used to interrogate both landscape-scale questions and feature-specific issues. With this expansion of scale into the hundreds of hectares becoming a new normal for large-scale housing and infrastructure projects, this new territory of larger scale is relatively unsupported by current geophysics guidelines, which have been developed under frameworks for surveys under a much smaller scale. These frameworks cannot be upscaled to meet the demands of multi-site, multi contractor development projects.
This paper explores how project design, equipment manufacture, real time data monitoring and collaborative analysis and reporting can be used to meet the challenges of kilometre scale geophysical surveys.

Chrys Harris (Magnitude Surveys Ltd)