A geoarchaeological approach to selected issues in Norwegian archaeological geophysical prospection
Petra Schneidhofer, Erich Nau, Christer Tonning, Immo Trinks
Abstract Until recently, large-scale, high-resolution geophysical archaeological prospection had not been applied in Norway, mostly due to the challenging environmental conditions. New developments regarding motorized data acquisition, data processing and visualisation as well as the use of complementary prospection techniques have been able to provide promising solutions to some of these issues. Since 2010, research and development carried out by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology (LBI ArchPro) and its Norwegian partners, Vestfold County Administration (Vestfold fylkeskommune) and the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU), have been focusing on selected Viking Age landscapes in Vestfold County (http://lbi-archpro.org/cs/vestfold/). The vast amount of geophysical archaeological prospection data collected during this period has highlighted a range of issues, including those caused by shallow magnetic bedrock and unsorted glacial and fine-grained marine sediments, which are inherent to the diverse and dynamic character of the Norwegian environment. These environmental characteristics considerably affect the interpretation of ground penetrating-radar and magnetometry data sets, prompting a more detailed investigation. Targeted in-situ measurements of physical properties of soils and sediments (dielectric permittivity, electrical conductivity, magnetic susceptibility) were conducted in order to enhance the quality of geophysical archaeological prospection data interpretation, to establish a comparative knowledge base for future investigations, and not least to render the large-scale prospection approach more reliable. Methodology and results of several geoarchaeological evaluation studies from Norway are presented.
