Farewell to GPR survey?

For many years we have provided GPR surveying for archaeological investigations but more recently we feel this has become an unsustainable technique for our company to deliver. There are several reasons why we have decided to remove GPR survey from the services that we supply, some of the main ones being unrealistic client expectations, often poor results over complex archaeology, the considerable time required to properly analyse data and produce reports and the considerable time and cost penalties involved with archiving data.

Recent moves in some parts of the UK towards using GPR in a more prospective manner, rather than targeting features, needs to be coupled with acceptable and realistic guidelines which we do not currently have and are not demonstrated within survey briefs etc. Data collection techniques have increased in speed over the last few years but the detailed analysis of that data has not. The latter requires considerable experience and time which is costly and often the end result is of little or no benefit to the archaeological assessment of a site. 

Although we will no longer be quoting for GPR survey we will utilise the technique in support of magnetometry and resistivity where we feel there are specific aims and objectives that may benefit from GPR. This will be targeted investigation used to clarify certain aspects of buried archaeology. In effect, this will meet the requirement for contingency as set out with the current guidelines.