Archaeology and Geophysics: Invincible Couple

Abstract

Today, there is almost no new archaeological discovery in which geophysical investigation tools do not play a key role. In fact, looking onto the past century, one could argue that geophysics, in a way, has rescued archaeology and revived it from its old-style techniques involving hard labor and timeconsuming digging and trenching. Today, thanks to geophysics, archaeology utilizes state-of the-art technologies, takes advantage of the most recent data management and processing techniques, and benefits from the latest image processing protocols. However, archaeology is not the only beneficiary from this successful coupling between archaeology and geophysics. Many of the advances in shallow and high-resolution geophysical techniques as well as data processing and interpretation capabilities can be indirectly attributed to the needs, demands and feedbacks of archaeologists. This successful exchange of benefits has resulted in a new scientific term that is commonly used nowadays; that is Archaeogeophysics or Archaeological Geophysics.