Achievement

Geophysical surveys were conducted at the largest copper ore resource zone in the southern Levant. 50 km southeast of the Dead Sea, the ~400km2 area is home to one of the world’s best-preserved ancient mining and metallurgy districts. Archaeologists carried out numerous excavations and surveys recording hundreds of sites related to metallurgical activities over the past 10 millennia; but Khirbat Faynan, Jordan’s most southern mound site with indications of widespread ancient architecture, remained unexcavated until 2011 when the IGERT-TEECH team employed a suite of noninvasive geophysical survey methods to identify areas suitable for excavation. Improvements in data processing software and 3D ERT (electrical resistivity tomography) sampling protocols greatly improve the application of noninvasive geophysical surveying in this hyperarid zone.