ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESISTIVITY SURVEY AT MONKEY HILL,

ST KITTS.
March 2014

Charles T. Young, Ph. D., Professor Emeritus of Geophysical Engineering,

Michigan Technological University.
Correspondence address: 208 Prospect St, Houghton, MI 49931, USA
email: ctyoung@mtu.edu

Resistivity is a common geophysical tool for archaeological studies.

Wet, loose soils (filled in excavations) have a low resistivity. Hard materials (a
building foundation or buried roadway) tend to be internally dry and have a high
resistivity. Very dry soil will have high resistivity. A resistivity map may reveal
straight lines or circles indicating anthropogenic structures. A good starting place
to find information about electrical resistivity for archaeology is
http://cast.uark.edu/nadag/

The resistivity measuring equipment was a DY4300 soil resistivity meter.

(http://www.dyinstrument.com/duoyi/?
q=ground_resistance_soil_resistivity_tester/DY4300)
This is a recently manufactured device, made in China. It is also used for
measuring the contact resistance for installation of grounded electrical
equipment. It is approximately one tenth the cost of comparable equipment
manufactured for the geophysical industry. Figure 1 is a photo of the DY4300 in
use. Other equipment consisted of two 60 m (200 ft.) lengths of stranded
insulated hookup wire equipped with banana plugs on one end and battery clips
on the other end, on a reel and two steel electrode stakes, and a plastic pipe
rectangular frame to carry the moving electrodes. The frame is shown in use in
Figure 2. This resistivity meter has the capability to record readings on an
internal memory. The readings can be recalled later for manual recording, but
unfortunately they cannot be downloaded to a computer. Thus, the data must be
written down by hand. The meter’s internal memory only serves as a backup to
manual data recording.

A pole-pole electrode array* was used for the survey. The moving current and
potential electrodes were spaced 0.5 m apart, mounted on a frame made of
plastic pipe. The reference electrodes were placed about 30 meters beyond the
edges of the survey grid, in opposite directions. The electrode spacing (0.5
meters, in this case) is approximately equal to the depth of sensing, BUT the
resulting resistivity is a composite value representing the material near the
electrode. The 0.5 m electrode spacing is common in archaeological
geophysical work.

The pole-pole electrode array* is a bit unusual for archaeological resistivity

surveys. It has advantages over the more common twin array and the more
cumbersome Wenner array as described in
*http://www.cast.uark.edu/nadag/EducationalMaterials/Bevan/Bevan1.pdf.

PROCEDURE
A survey base and outline were established as chosen by David Rollinson.
A search pattern within the outline consisting of a rectangular grid was
established by laying out metric measuring tapes. Directions were established
with a Brunton Pocket Transit, with the declination set to magnetic north 158
degrees west of true north. The grid extended 14 meters in the increasing x
direction (140 degrees from true north, approximately parallel to the ocean shore)
and extended 16 meters in the extending y direction (50 degrees from true north,
approximately perpendicular to the shore). Data were acquired along lines of
constant x values. The data recorded were: line number (x location), the y
location of the leading electrode, the resistivity reading from the meter, and the
data record number in the resistivity meter.
ij
DATA DISPLAY
The x, y and resistivity values were keyed into a computer file, and a contour
map of the values were created. I use software I prepared using the
Octave/Matlabprogramming language. I have many years of experience using
my Matlab/Octave color-contouring program. The program is concise, but not
simple. Matlab is a well-known program package, which is particularly good for
displaying and analyzing scientific data and doing general scientific computation.
It is commonly available at universities but is rather expensive for individual
purchasers. Octave is a freeware Matlab act-alike. A popular freeware program
is available for display of archaeological resistivity data, but it has certain
limitations that make it difficult for me to use.
http://www.sussexarch.org.uk/geophys/snuffler.html

I prepared color contour maps of the resistivity data, as shown in Figure 3, I

displayed a map of the logarithm to the base 10 of the electrical resistivity values.
This manipulation enhances the visibility of small values of resistivity. The blue
values are low resistivity, the yellow, orange, and reds are higher resistivities.
The main features of the map are:
Feature 1. a more or less circular region of low resistivities (dark blue) in the
lower left hand third of the map.
Feature 2. More or less diagonal bands of high resistivities (yellow, orange and
red), in the upper right two thirds of the map.
I interpret Feature 1 as a possible circular filled-in excavation. The most likely
interpretation I can provide for Feature 2 is that it may be a region where the
bedrock comes closer to the surface.

APPENDIX: DETAILS OF THE SURVEY GRID

The Y direction was approximately 50 degrees east of geographic north, the X
direction was approximately 140 degrees east of geographic north. Magnetic
north is 15.8 degrees of geographic north at this location.

GPS LATITUDE AND LONGITUDE OF GRID

Non-professional GPS units do not have sufficient accuracy to record the
locations of the individual resistivity readings. I will report the median (a statistic
slightly different from average) value of the values I recorded for the perimeter of
the grid. I walked the perimeter of the grid logging latitude and longitude with the
GPS function of my smartphone. It is well known that the accuracy of a non-
professional GPS is only just 5 to 10 meters. I logged about 1000 values, and I
report the median value. For various reasons, the median is more robust than the
mean (average) value.

Latitude 17.346752 degrees north (17 degrees, 22 minutes, 36.3 seconds)

Longitude 62.835132 degrees west (62 degrees, 50 minutes, 6.5 seconds)
Site altitude: 183.7 meters

Please be cautioned that GPS reports location to one-millionth of a degree, or

about 0.1 meters (about four inches),
but this is unrealistic false accuracy.

ADDITIONAL REFERENCES
Oliver Anthony Clark, Anthony Clark,
Seeing Beneath the Soil: Prospecting Methods in Archaeology, 1990.

C. Gaffney and J. Gater, Revealing the Buried Past: Geophysics for

Archaeologists, Tempus Publishing. Stroud, 2003. ISBN 0752425560
Figure 1. DY4300 resistivity meter in use.

Figure 2. Plastic frame for electrodes and resistivity meter in use by author and
assistant.
Figure 3. Map of resistivity values.