To begin with, we take off the top 20-30 cm of soil with a backhoe. This makes it a little faster to get to the archaeological deposits from the Viking age. The deposits are covered with 30-40 cm of windblown deposits. By removing the top layer, it also allows us to get more energy into the ground with GPR. More on that tomorrow.
JMS
Dr. John Steinberg has been a Research Scientist at the Fiske Center since 2006. He received his PhD in Anthropology from UCLA in 1997. Before coming to UMass Boston, John taught at UCLA and California State University Northridge. He is interested in the economic problems of colonization, both in New England and across the North Atlantic. He uses GIS and shallow geophysics to study settlement patterns to understand broad trends over the landscape. In addition to John's New England work, he has been studying the settlement patterns of Viking Age Iceland. John is the director of the Digital Archaeology Laboratory at the Fiske Center.