Undergraduate Research & Scholarships

Cleo Cottrell L&S Social Sciences

Detection Abilities of GPR and ERT for Faunal Remains and Bone Beds

Ground penetrating radar (GPR) and electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) are two geophysical instruments used for minimally invasive survey projects. This research will focus on applying these instruments in an archaeological context, specifically to investigate the detection abilities of GPR and ERT in identifying faunal remains and bone beds in California. While the use of GPR to locate marked and unmarked graves has been documented, there is a lack of literature surrounding ERT use on bone beds and the use of both instruments in detecting faunal remains. To test these capabilities, I plan to generate, process, and interpret data from our case study site, which contains large faunal remains.

Message To Sponsor

Thank you so much to my donor, the Wishek Fund, for making this summer of research possible. Being a SURF fellow helped guide me through a rough patch in my projects trajectory; my research goals hit a wall and I had to reevaluate what I was doing. Without the overall reassurance from SURF mentors that project evolution is ok, I think I would have felt disappointed in myself and gotten stuck. I now feel confident in my choice to trust my gut and shift the direction of my project to something new. I definitely have learned more about how I handle a situation like that, and how to move out of it in a positive way. Overall, SURF helped me out in a lot of ways this summer, and I will always cherish this experience and opportunity.