3 Rodrigues et al gpr2008 birminghan

GPR survey in Coastal Sambaqui Archaeological Site in Santa Catarina State, Brazil Selma I. Rodrigues 1, Jorge L. Porsani 1, *, Paulo A.D. DeBlasis 2 and Paulo C.F. Giannini 3 1 Instituto de Astronomia, Geofísica e Ciências Atmosféricas, Universidade de São Paulo, Rua do Matão, 1226, Butantã, 05508-090, São Paulo, Brazil. E-mail: [e-mail] 2 Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil. 3 Instituto de Geociências, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil.
SUMMARY In this work some GPR results obtained in coastal sambaqui Jabuticabeira II are presented. Jabuticabeira II is located in Santa Catarina State, South of Brazil. GPR profiles show interesting anomalous reflectors, which can be related to targets of archaeological interest. 2D FDTD modelling studies presented good accordance with real data obtained in the field. Synthetic model has been constructed in order to evaluate the performance of GPR method in relation to materials found in that environment, besides helping interpretations of real results. So, GPR results function as reference guide to direct excavation activities in buried archaeological, and geological structures, a task that will be the next step of this research. Key Words: GPR, FDTD modelling, coastal sambaquis, archaeological artefacts, Brazil. 1 INTRODUCTION Studies about archaeological sites are doing more and more in an interdisciplinary way. The integration of different methodologies, such as archaeological, geophysical, geological, and geographic ones, allows there is a reduction of time and costs involved in the characterization, excavation, and analysis of the archaeological artefacts. Geophysics, especially, is used in the characterization and delimitation of structures covered by geological materials. In the literature, several geophysical works can be found in applications in archaeological interests, among them, Ground Penetrating Radar – GPR stands out as a method of great usefulness (Watters, 2004;