Integrating Multiple Geophysical Datasets

In the past two decades improvements in geophysical instrumentation, survey techniques, and computer methods for handling spatial data have yielded significant advances in the management, portrayal, and interpretation of subsurface data. Geophysical investigations on archaeological sites have long utilized multiple survey methods. The use of difference methods allows responses to a variety of physical properties and the possibility of confirmatory, complementary, or entirely new information from each device. Such datasets have conventionally been examined side-by-side allowing informative comparisons. With GIS and other computer methods data may now be co-registered and more fully integrated in composite graphics of multidimensional content. Several approaches to “data fusion” are investigated including mathematical-statistical techniques, GIS, and advanced computer graphics. High-resolution, large-area datasets from the historic commercial center of Army City (A.D. 1917–1921), in central Kansas, illustrate benefits of these approaches.