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In the last few years, several Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) based magnetometer systems have been tested for archaeological prospection. Due to their higher sensitivity, scalar magnetometers have been preferred as test sensors. However, total field magnetometer are vulnerable to disturbances, especially those generated by the UAV itself. Therefore, most UAV scalar magnetometer systems use the method of increasing the distance between magnetic sensors and the UAV to reduce interference. But freely suspended sensors tend to swing on ropes under the UAV and can produce data that are strongly influenced by heading errors. For our test, we therefore chose the UAV-fixed, compact setup of the SENSYS MagDrone R4, which is equipped with five three-axis FGM3D/75 fluxgate sensors at 50 cm spacing and is covering a swath width of 2.5 m. The 200Hz sampling rate of the R4 allows easy filtering of interference generated by the UAV and external disturbances like power lines or infrastructure. Magnetograms with a spatial resolution of up to 0.20 m per pixel were produced from the data. At Ganacker, we chose the former infrastructure core of the World War II German Air Force airfield as a test site. A wide range of archaeological structures and features with high magnetic contrast were expected on this area. The test site is currently an open agricultural area with a quite flat terrain. Hence, the R4 could be operated at a fixed flight height of just one metre above the surface of the terrain that is controlled actively by a radar sensor. An area of around 110 hectares were prospected within only four days. The MagDrone R4 system thus offers an outstanding survey area progress that cannot even reached by common vehicle-moved multi-sensor arrays. Here, we present the first results of this test survey by comparing the magnetograms, historical and current geodata. Most of the expected archaeological features and several unknown ones were detected by the R4 system. Our results show that the R4 system is well suited for mapping large archaeological structures with high magnetisations. In the future, we want to compare the R4 data with data from a ground-based fluxgate magnetometer. We also want to test whether the system is suitable for detecting archaeological features that have lower magnetic susceptibility and remanence contrasts with the surrounding soil., poster

During the last few years, the use of Ground-Penetrating-Radar (GPR) multi-channel antenna arrays in the Archaeological Prospection increased dramatically. The main advantage of this type of survey is a much faster data acquisition combined with a dense profile spacing. However, most of the common multi-channel arrays consist of antennae with a spacing of not smaller than 8 cm. The aim of our test survey was to evaluate how an even denser spacing of 4 cm that is provided by the IDS Stream-C GPR device at a centre frequency of 600 MHz can improve the detection of small archaeological features. As a test site, we chose the Great Bath in Kempten-Cambodunum. This first capital of the Roman province Rhaetia never has been overbuilt in the following centuries and even today it is used as a grassland declared as an Archaeological Park. Already in 1911, the Great Bath was excavated and beside the walls of different building phases, also small features like a multitude of hypocaust pillars were unearthed. Hence, this building structure depicts an ideal test site and a 40x40m grid covering the main part of the construction was chosen for the application of the antenna array. As a comparison, the same grid was contemporaneously surveyed with a single antenna IDS Duo device (600 and 200 MHz) and a 50 cm profile spacing. Regarding the walls of the Roman bath, the two surveys show comparable results: both datasets represent the stone constructions of 50 – 90 cm width quite well. Furthermore, the depth slices of both devices provide a differentiation of the single building phases. Nevertheless, the resolution for the multi-channel antenna array is of course much higher due to the denser profile spacing. Huger differences occur for the hypocaust pillars of 25 cm lateral length. These features can be mapped in detail with the 4 cm profile spacing of the IDS Stream-C system. Whereas the IDS Duo can only resolve some of the hypocausts, a multitude of them gets visible between 70 and 110 cm depth in the Stream-C data. As a conclusion, it can be stated that standard archaeological remains like stone walls, for sure, can be surveyed with single antenna GPR devices in a common profile spacing of 50 cm. However, in case of the existence of faint archaeological features the application of ultra-dense antenna arrays like the IDS Stream-C is advisable to get a comprehensive overview of a site without the necessity to excavate them., poster