Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) for identifying the archeological caves of Trinchera (Sierra de Atapuerca, Burgos, Spain)

Abstract

The Sierra de Atapuerca sites located in the Trinchera area are ancient caves filled with sediments that were sectioned by a XIXth Century railroad trench. Sima del Elefante, Galería Complex and Gran Dolina sites have been studied for decades providing outstanding Early and Middle Pleistocene archaeo-palaeoanthropological remains (Bermúdez de Castro et al., 1997; Carbonell et al., 2008; Ortega et al., 2014). The understanding of these caves morphologies and the relationship between their infillings is thus one of the research team’s priorities (Ortega et al., 2013). To that end, geophysical prospections are being applied to these sites having the Electrical Resistivity Tomography (ERT) already revealed its ability to characterize part of this karstic landscape sub-surface geometry (Ortega et al., 2010; Bermejo et al., 2014 a and b). This work presents the Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) prospections carried out for the first time on the Trinchera area. This method offered supplementary data to the previous ERT prospections as well as provided new information about unexplored areas were ERT was not performed. The singularity of Thinchera, were karstic features can be found less than 2 m underground, has also allowed to calibrate the method. The result of this exploration, together with the previous topographic, archaeological, geological and geomorphological data, shows a larger complexity of the karstic system than previously thought, offering both a better understanding of the sites’ formation processes and planning of the excavation and management strategies.