Physicist Uses Radio Signals to Search Downtown Las Vegas for Signs of Ancient Pit Houses

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Source: Newswise

Using radio signals instead of shovels, a physics faculty member from Ithaca College, along with local archeologists, has found evidence of additional 1,300-year-old pit houses five miles from the Las Vegas Strip. This recent find promises to give archaeologists new insights into how people who once lived in the Southwest transitioned from a foraging society to a sedentary one.

Using ground penetrating radio equipment, Michael “Bodhi” Rogers and two of his undergraduate researchers have produced images showing the possible location of two ancient dug-out dwellings known as pit houses. It is anticipated that more pit houses will be identified as the researchers further analyze the data. The ancestral Puebloans who lived in those pit houses were seasonally using the location.

Rogers made his discovery in Springs Preserve, a 180-acre national historic site within the Las Vegas city limits. He and sophomore physics majors Chris Hastings and Kevin Hurley were working in collaboration with preserve archeologist Patti Wright. Previous digs at the site unearthed two pit houses as well as ceramics and other ancient artifacts. But where those earlier investigations employed traditional excavation methods, Rogers’s team used ground-based remote sensing (GBRS) techniques, which use radar, radio waves, and other technologies that can “see” under the ground to reveal disturbed soil patterns and other geophysical changes created by human occupation of the site.

“Depending on the scope of the project, we can obtain information much more quickly with remote sensing technology,” Rogers said. “We can accomplish in days what might take years using traditional methods. By telling archaeologists if something’s down there or not, GBRS lets them know where to dig and also where not to dig. They save a lot of time, and there’s a lot less destruction of the site. The results of the excavation help confirm the interpretation of the geophysical data, which can then be used to help understand house shapes and organization.”

http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/549198/