On December 5, 2019, invited by CAS Key Laboratory of Underwater Acoustic Environment, Ole Gron from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark visited the Institute of Acoustics, and gave an academic report entitled How to Use Acoustics to Find Stone Age Sites Under Water in IACAS. Researcher REN Qunyan hosted the seminar. More than 20 scholars and graduate students in related fields attended the seminar.
Prof. Ole Gron first briefly introduced the sub-bottom profilers, maritime archeology, and Stone Age sites, including the principles of the equipment, the devices of the experimental ship, the form of emitted signal.He also explained the layered seafloor images obtained from the equipment. After that, he took Beijing Man as an example to introduce the Stone Age sites and explained the fluctuation of sea level in various periods affected by the ice sheets. He gave the distribution of nearly one thousand underwater Stone Age sites found in Denmark. Then, an effective method for finding underwater Stone Age sites was introduced. The method used a high-resolution sub-bottom profiling system to map archaeological features embedded in the sea floor and record responses from knapped flint. Besides, such responses could not be produced by naturally cracked flint and the flint embedded in the seafloor could be detected. Finally, he put forward some technical problems in the detection and excavation of Stone Age sites under complex conditions and gave an introduction on his group through pictures.
In the Q&A session, Prof. Ole Gron discussed with the researchers about the judgment of the Stone Age sites, the current discovery of the sites, the application of the sub-bottom profilers and the use of other equipment, and the follow-up study of the sites.
Prof. Ole Gron received a master's degree in prehistoric archeology from the University of Aarhus in Denmark in 1983 and a doctorate in prehistoric archeology from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark in 1993. Since 2014, he has been working in the Norwegian Maritime Museum in Oslo, and the Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. His most recent and ongoing activities include maritime archaeological fieldwork and experiments in Denmark, Israel and Switzerland (Lake Zurich) related to acoustic detection of submerged Stone Age sites, and the development of the existing maritime archaeological theory concerning hunter-gatherer landscape behavior. His research interests include the development and application of remote sensing methods for the mapping of archaeological sites on land and under water, etc.
Prof. Ole Gron was delivering his report.