Introduction

It was a year ago in March that I had the good fortune to join Susan Kane and Sam Carrier in the Abruzzos. I and my colleague, Erv Garrison, met our Oberlin College friends at the Rome airport and the archeogeophysical adventure began. When it was over a week later, I left Italy with far more than geophysical data. A partnership among the USDA-Forest Service, Oberlin and the Superintendency of the Abruzzo was in the wind. More about that later. Let me begin with an introduction about me, my agency, and why I am here.

The USDA-Forest Service Heritage Program

I am the Regional Archeologist for the Southern Region of the USDA-Forest Service, a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Known world-wide for its fire-fighting expertise, the USDA-Forest Service also has the largest federal archeology program in the USA. My Region covers 13 million acres of National Forest land within 13 states and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. There are about 40 archeologists tending to the business of heritage preservation in these 13 states. Since the National Heritage program’s inception in the mid-1970s, we have identified nearly 50,000 archeological sites ranging in age from 10,000 BC to modern times. We invest more than $5 million annually into the discovery and protection of the Southern Region’s heritage. We do not do the archeology work alone. Ours is a very public program. For example, last year volunteers donated more than 31,000 hours helping find, excavate, and interpret archeological sites.

The business of mitigation Both Italy and the United States have federal laws that require the identification and protection of archeological sites in advance of an activity that threatens to destroy them. In the United States, when a new recreation park or other ground disturbing action is planned, archeological surveys and site testing are carried out. Mitigating the adverse effects caused by constructing a new recreation park through data recovery is often chosen. After archeological sites are dug up, the data is recovered, and recreation park construction can proceed.

The task of finding the “goodies” in archeological sites is time consuming and expensive. It may take crews of several people days or weeks to come upon the buried archeological pits, house floors, or burials that we want to avoid, preserve or recover. Fortunately, there are a number of geophysical tools that can be applied in archeological contexts to locate or image buried archeological phenomena. Not all of them work well in every place, but at least one tool works in most places. While expensive in the short term to acquire the equipment and train people how to use it, in the long run the results can be spectacular and pay for the investment many times over. Through an array of national and international partnerships and direct purchase, my agency now promotes and uses ground penetrating radar, magnetometry, and resistivity tools to locate and excavate archeological values, global positioning to georeference our work, and geographic information systems to describe, map, interpret, and manage the results.

Working in the Abruzzos, the Sangro Valley Project

The tools we deployed last year in the Abruzzos were ground penetrating radar (GPR) and magnetometry (MAG). Both seemed to work well. Of the two, I prefer GPR.

Ground penetrating radar (GPR) is becoming the non-invasive geophysical tool of choice by many archeologists to profile archeological sites and locate subsurface features and artifacts (Conyers and Goodman, 1997:11). The reasons for its increasing popularity are that in many cases it really works. GPR produces instant on-screen graphical representations of below-ground phenomena. The equipment available on the market is affordable, easily transportable, and simple to operate. Put another way, the GPR method offers an inexpensive and fast method to map buried prehistoric and historic sites in three-dimensions, allowing remains to be protected or selectively excavated with minimal disturbance.

A GPR system physically consists of two main parts: an antenna to transmit electromagnetic energy and receive reflections; and a control unit to record and display the data. Once the data has been captured, it is then post-processed using special software to filter out noise and display the images. GPR data can be interpreted 2-dimensionally as a single profile of a distance X to X1, or 3-dimensionally as a volume composite of profiles X, Y and depth Z representing a block of an area surveyed. Our work at Aquachiara and Monte Pallano studied both the single profiles and larger composite blocks representing 20-meter by 20-meter or larger areas. At Aquachiara, a 400 MHz antenna (range 60nS) was pulled along transects spaced 1 meter apart. Electronic distance marks were placed at 1 meter intervals on each transect line. The data was post-processed and fifteen 4nS amplitude slices were created for analysis.

The results showed 2 large anomalies and a smaller one near the surface. Below this there was activity in the grid lower quadrant which changed at a greater depth to a wall-like anomaly at the grid mid-section. All of these should be excavated. This week, in partnership with Oberlin College, we will conduct more GPR and MAG work with new software that will hopefully yield even more spectacular results to guide future archeological activity.

Prospect for the Future

Archeological sites, in themselves, are interesting and can tell us a great deal about how people lived in the past. But archeological sites can and should be managed in a way that brings local prosperity through heritage tourism.

In December, 2001, at our national headquarters in Washington, D.C., Dr. Faustoferri delivered an inspiring account of the cultural resource assets in the Abruzzos and how the communities, under the Sangro-Aventine Territorial Improvement Pact sponsored by the European Union, are banding together to offer fee-based heritage tourism. This interests us very much. We have not been very successful in international heritage tourism. Through an international agreement to be signed soon, the USDA-Forest Service will be working collaboratively with the Abruzzo Superintendency to mutually share expertise in all aspects of heritage management. My agency hopes to learn the Abruzzos formula for achieving successful sustainable, integrated, socioeconomic regional development by featuring key cultural, historical, and environmental assets linked to tourism as a basis for economic growth.

ALTRI INTERVENTI