Geophysical Survey as Part of Rescue Archaeological Excavation on Large Construction Projects—Case Study: Road I/16 Slaný–Velvary (Czech Republic)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1. The manuscript focus on magnetic survey as geophysical tool, and no other geophysical survey is carried out, so the title may be revised as “Magnetic survey as part of rescue archaeological excavation on large construction projects. Case study: Road I/16 Slaný - Velvary (Czech Republic)”.

2. For magnetic survey, it is only sensitive to objects easy to produce large magnetic anomaly, and hard to detect objects with weak magnetic anomaly. The authors should discuss this could be a major limitation for magnetic survey.

3. Context in line 299-304, and line 314-320 are slightly redundant

4. The author conclude in line 794-795 “and topsoil is unlikely to have played a significant role in the detection and interpretation of objects in the magnetic data”. However, according to fig 14b and 14c. It dose impact the resolution for anomaly picture. Please give comments on impacts of topsoil to high resolution magnetic survey.  

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

English grammar should be improved to meet the requirements of scientific papers for conciseness and clarity.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Nice paper on the usage of magnetics for archaeological prospection. I have only two small comments. First, in the current version it is hard to see in the magnetometer images the features you identified as possible archaeological objects. I recommend to show at least two close-ups of possible features (and also their interpretation and excavation), so that the reader gets an idea of your manual interpretation. Second, why did you only focus on magnetic surveying? In your case GPR should work very fine and reveal those structures, and in this case there shouldn't be any missmatch in coordinates.
Next to my comments on your article I have only one additional question regarding the magnetic images. What do you think what the linear features in e.g. figure 14 might represent?

Comments on the Quality of English Language

-

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 

This manuscript introduces a very interesting case of using geophysical methods for archaeological excavation rescue. I believe this is a very meaningful work, and the author's discussion of their work is also very detailed. I have only two questions:

1. Why was magnetic surveying conducted? Has the feasibility been demonstrated in the preliminary stage? In other words, does the target of detection have a distinguishable difference in magnetic susceptibility that can manifest as an anomaly? I suggest adding a paragraph explaining the magnetic characteristics of archaeological situationsand conducting a feasibility analysis of magnetic surveying.

2. What is the basis for interpreting the anomalies in figures 2 to 10 as archaeological situations? Is there a quantitative standard, such as a magnetic anomaly exceeding a certain threshold?

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf