This document discusses various archaeological reconnaissance methods used to locate and study sites without excavation. It describes surface survey techniques like fieldwalking, test pitting and geophysical methods. Aerial photography using planes, balloons, kites and satellites is also discussed as a tool to identify sites through cropmarks and soil marks. Historical records like maps, documents and oral accounts provide important contextual information. Remote sensing methods involving radar, sonar and infrared help study large areas. Together, these non-destructive techniques aid archaeological research and site discovery.

1. THE ARCHAEOLOGY
COURSEBOOK
CHAPTER 1
ARCHAEOLOGICAL
RECONNAISSANCE

2. Methods
♦ Desktop study
♦ Surface survey
♦ Geophysical / geochemical survey
♦ Aerial survey
♦ Remote sensing
♦ Chance!
BUT…
Not everything is lost from view!

3. Sites that were never lost
♦ Pyramids at Giza
(But NOT the Sphinx!)
♦ Stonehenge

4. Sites found by chance
♦ Lascaux
♦ Altamira
♦ Otzi the Iceman
♦ Pete Marsh
♦ Xian

5. Historical Documents
♦ Legal documents
♦ Economic records
♦ Tax records
♦ Pictorial records
♦ Written accounts
♦ Archaeological
records & reports
♦ Oral accounts
♦ Maps

6. Legal Documents
♦ Records of ownership
♦ Anglo-Saxon charters
♦ Court orders
♦ Wills
♦ Inventories
Charter from King Eadwig granting forty hides
at Ely to Oda, Archbishop of Canterbury, 957 AD.
(Bodleian Library, Oxford)

7. Economic Records
♦ Orders & sales lists
♦ Agent’s bills (e.g. estates)
♦ Directories of services
♦ Plans & Drafts
Original plans for Brunel's railway bridge at Windsor

8. Tax Records
♦ Linked to ownership
♦ Tithe awards
♦ Tax surveys
(e.g. Domesday Book)
Instructions for the collection of
“Domesday” returns i.e. taxes!

9. Pictorial Records
♦ Paintings
♦ Photographs
Turner’s
painting of
Stonehenge
(1825)

10. Pictorial Records
♦ Engravings
♦ Aerial Photographs
Boise, Idaho (USA), 1888
Durham
City, present
day

11. Written Accounts
♦ Descriptions of places
found in:
1. diaries
2. books
e.g. antiquarian work
Image of Stonehenge from
William Stukeley’s book
(1740)

12. Archaeological Records !
♦ Previous excavations & surveys
located in:
museums
libraries
SMRs
NMR

13. ARCHIVE PHOTOS: JERICHO

14. SCHEDULED MONUMENT

15. Oral Accounts
♦ From people living in the area
♦ Might know what has happened in the
relatively recent past
– knowledge of past visits by
anthropologists
– knowledge of past techniques and
working areas (e.g. pottery making)
– farmers’ knowledge of recently
ploughed areas
– knowledge of recent locations of
buildings

16. Maps
♦ One of the MOST important tools
♦ Used to examine and locate sites in the
landscape
 track changes through time
e.g. boundaries, land units, fields,
hedges

17. Regression using Maps
♦ Can work back from the oldest available
map
♦ Cross-reference historical sources and
fieldnames / place-names
 develop maps for periods prior to
mapping (e.g. Medieval period)

18. Early Maps
from 16th
Century
onwards
♦ Not always to
scale
♦ May include
visual aspects
e.g. illustrations
Engraved map of Hampshire, incl.
vignette of Southampton.
Thomas Moule,1845

19. Modern Ordnance Survey (OS)
Maps
♦ from 19th
Century onwards
♦ mapped each county at 1 inch to 1 mile
♦ give details of individual buildings
♦ developed use of grid system
♦ can use series of maps to see changes in land
use over time

20. Other Useful Maps
♦ High resolution
maps
- i.e. good scale
such as OS
1:25000 series
♦ Geological Maps
♦ Street maps
♦ Vegetation &
Climate maps
♦ Survey maps

21. Surface Survey
♦ fieldwalking
♦ surveying
♦ aerial photography
 recognise scatters
 develop contour maps
(can be densities of
pottery / lithics)
Dot density plot for
ceramics (each dot
equals 0.1 ceramic sherd
per field walking tract),
southern Romania.

22. Fieldwalking
♦ Surface collection
(US term)
♦ Systematic
collection of
artefacts
Decisions:
- collect all pieces?
- collect only diagnostic pieces?
- width of traverses / size of grids?

23. Pros & Cons of Fieldwalking
♦ Cheap!
♦ Quick and relatively easy
♦ Only useful on arable land (recently
ploughed)
♦ Results are only guidance (things
migrate)
♦ Differential collection / recognition by
different fieldwalkers

24. SURFACE SURVEY

25. Other Surface Survey Methods
♦ Shovel pit testing (taking regular buckets
of soil from test pits and sieving them)
♦ Coring (extract sample of subsoil
♦ Augering  snapshot of stratigraphy)
♦ Probing
Somewhat destructive & time-consuming!

26. TEST PITS

27. Geophysical & Geochemical
Methods
♦ Analysis of heavy metals and lipids in
topsoil (e.g. phosphates)
♦ Detection of magnetic & electrical
anomalies

28. GEOPHYSICS: FIELD
BOUNDARIES

29. MAQGNETOMETRY AT
ALFOLDEAN 2OO5

30. LONGBARROW: COMPARISON OF
RESISTIVITY AND MAGNETOMETRY

31. RESISTIVITY

32. RESISTIVITY AT
ALFOLDEAN

33. RESISTIVITY

34. MAGNETOMETRY AT
ALFOLDEAN

35. Resistivity Survey
♦ Pass an electrical charge
through the soil
♦ Measure differences in
conductance
More moisture 
greater conductivity
Buried ditch  usually
retains water  conducts
water better than
surrounding soil
Long
Barrow,
Gloucs
shows
flanking
ditches

36. Magnetometry
♦ Measures
local magnetic
distortions
♦ Can be due to:
 digging of pits
(in-fill will have
different
magnetic charge
than the subsoil)
 fires (kilns or
hearths reset the
magnetic field)

37. Aerial Survey
♦ Aerial
Photography
♦ from light
aircraft or
balloons
♦ verticals /
obliques
♦ cropmarks /
shadow sites /
soil colours
Barrow cemetery
(oblique, cropmarks),
Cavendish, Suffolk

38. AP OBLIQUE OF DMV

39. CROPMARKS

40. AP OBLIQUE OF
STONEHENGE

41. AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHY
FROM A KITE

42. AP FROM A KITE

43. AP: ONE OF A STEREO
PAIR

44. Remote Sensing
♦ from non-ground
based methods
i.e. from planes
and satellites
♦ radar
♦ sonar
♦ thermal imaging
♦ infrared
photography
satellite image of the Heraklean
Peninsula, Ukraine

45. SATELLITE IMAGES

46. INFRARED PHOTOGRAPHY

48. GIS LANDSCAPE NET

49. Underwater Archaeology
♦ has its own set of techniques and
methods
e.g. Remotely Operated Vehicles
(ROVs)