Colleen Mahoney Uses Ground-penetrating Radar and Magnetometry to Make Archaeological Discovery

2015 Apr 17

Colleen Mahoney, a senior music and physics major in the School of Music at Ithaca College, traveled to Las Vegas with associate professor of physics Michael "Bodhi" Rogers and four other physics majors to map the Larder Site - an archeological site occupied by Native Americans 2,000 years ago - using ground-penetrating radar and magnetometry.

Using radar, the team found signals that resembled what could have been a pit-house, and an excavation team on site confirmed this the following day.

"For our team, this was really exciting because within two days of work we identified a house at the site, which now changes our understanding of it," Rogers said.