Had to choose between digging near a known site or following a faint signal 2 miles away

Last summer I was out on a survey near Flagstaff and my ground penetrating radar picked up something weird off to the east. But right where I was standing there was a known Puebloan site from the 1200s that my partner wanted to focus on. I ended up going with the signal and walked 2 miles through brush to check it out. Turns out it was just an old buried drainage pipe from the 1950s, totally useless. Meanwhile the team found a complete corrugated pot back at the main site. Has anyone else made a bad call chasing a radar anomaly over a sure thing?

2 comments

2 Comments

wadeowens11d ago

Same thing happened to me out in New Mexico a few years back. That faint signal turned out to be a cattle trough from the 1930s, not the old trade route we were hoping for. What changed my luck was going back over the same spot with a different frequency setting on the GPR, sometimes that can help you tell the difference between metal and stone. Also started keeping a notebook of false positives (which is a lot of them honestly) so I could spot patterns. Now I generally trust the known sites over the ghost readings unless the anomaly is really screaming at me from multiple angles.

evaperez11d ago

Three weeks I spent chasing a ghost line through Arizona brush before my buddy pointed out it was just an old barbed wire fence buried under two feet of dirt. @wadeowens you're right about the frequency trick though, that saved me from digging up another dozen rusted cans last summer.