While any geophysical survey can provide insights about the subsurface, the survey of large contiguous areas provides the added benefit of the realization of context and associations between elements of a site. Here, with a number of randomly placed survey blocks, a plethora of anomalies are visible, enough to keep field archaeologists busy for a long while, but there is a lack of any pattern or overall impression about the nature of the site and how it is organized.

This result is akin to traditional archaeological excavations where only small exposures can be made, analogous to pin-pricks in the larger landscape. While the archaeologist might gain some basic understanding of the site's overall organization, samples of portable artifacts, and chronological information, little detail about the site's true layout is achieved, a circumstance archaeologists have long been blind to.

Geophysical surveys provide a mechanism that allows detailed mappings of site features over large areas, enabling visualization of the components of entire settlements. Such information can constitute, in itself, a primary record about a place sufficient for inter- or intra-site analyses.

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(Data source: Whistling Elk Village, SD.)

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