Dropped $300 on ground-penetrating radar rental for a dig site in Georgia and it either saved me from digging up an old septic tank or burned me on a false reading that made us miss a real feature.

I'm split between trusting the GPR results that said there's nothing under a certain spot or going with my gut that says there's a burial pit there based on soil color changes, has anyone else dealt with radar giving them bad intel on a site?

2 comments

2 Comments

fiona_carr267d ago

300 bucks and all I got was a fancy way to confirm that my gut feelings are just gas from too many gas station burritos before a dig. Last year I ran GPR over what I swore was a historic trash pit, the thing showed nothing but roots and rocks, so I ignored it and dug anyway. Ended up finding a 1970s sprinkler system that sprayed water in my face like the site was mocking me. So yeah, I think GPR is great if you want to save time digging up old plumbing, but I stopped trusting it to find actual archaeology after it told me a perfectly good midden was just a "low density anomaly" that turned out to be a buried lawnmower.

wood.uma7d ago

Is it just me or does every piece of gear that promises to find the good stuff end up pointing you straight at the worst stuff? Last spring I rented a fancy metal detector for a week and the loudest signal I got was from a buried can of baked beans from the 90s. I dug for three hours in the heat because it kept chirping like it was gold, and all I had to show for it was a rusty can and a sunburn that peeled for a week. GPR sounds like the same deal but fancier and more expensive.