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Rant: That fancy ground-penetrating radar at the site in Tucson was a total waste
I volunteered on a dig outside Tucson last spring, and they brought in this ground-penetrating radar setup that cost like $15,000 to rent for a week. We spent 3 days scanning a spot where the radar showed some big anomalies. Then we dug down 6 feet with shovels and found nothing but a buried 1950s pickup truck frame. Next time I'd rather just use a probe pole and old test trenches from the 90s survey maps. Has anyone else had a high-tech tool totally flop on a dig?
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wells.evan1mo ago
Bruh, that's just bad luck with tech" yeah, but I dunno if it's all luck. I was reading a blog by some geoarch guy who said GPR works way better on sandy soil than the clay-heavy stuff we got in the Southwest. He said the radar waves just scatter in wet clay and give false positives like crazy. Sounds like your site might have had that issue, especially if it was monsoon season down there. Reminds me of when I watched a doc about using lidar in the jungle - those guys found whole cities under the canopy but only because the tech matched the terrain. Sometimes a probe pole is just more honest, ya know?
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