Search for Lost Colony takes a high-tech turn

An innocuous-looking golf course tractor pushing a platform on wheels could help illustrate the nation's oldest mystery.

In the quest for the Lost Colony, the vanished 1587 English settlement on Roanoke Island, archaeologists have conducted numerous explorations in Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, digging and surveying and scanning and scoping.

But they've never used high-tech radar tomography that can produce 3-D images out of data collected from 6 feet, more or less, under ground.

The refined technology, which can also use sound and light waves, gained early fame when inventor Alan Witten used it to help locate fossils from a 120-foot-long dinosaur - called "seismosaur us " - in the late 1980s in New Mexico. The find was fictionalized in Michael Crichton's "Jurassic Park."

"This is fantastic, cutting-edge technology," said Eric Klingelhofer, vice president of the First Colony Foundation, in a telephone interview. "I am eager to see the findings and then compare them with what we know of the archaeology of the site."

On a recent, rainy Saturday morning, Klingelhofer, who is a professor at Mercer University in Georgia, watched as a contractor with Witten Technologies drove the tractor back and forth in the parking lot and grass borders near the ticket booth at Waterside Theatre, where "The Lost Colony" outdoor drama is performed each summer.

"We're picking up the utilities, which is good, because that's what the equipment is designed to do," he said. "But we have picked up some anomalies, which is good."

The veteran archaeologist said the foundation, which has an agreement with the National Park Service to do archaeological investigations at the park, dug on the sound side of the parking lot in 2006. And in the 1990s, archaeologists dug between the earthworks and the theater. The hope, he said, is that Witten's technology, which is costing a couple of thousand dollars, can help pinpoint where significant anomalies, or irregularities, are located before the archaeologists touch a shovel.

"We're able to take snapshots of the underground, basically a picture," said John Krause Jr., senior vice president of Somerville, Mass.-based Witten Technologies. "We're giving them evidence so they can focus their efforts in collecting other evidence. So rather than randomly digging, we can tell them 'This is a good place to dig.' "

The technology can slice, layer-by-layer, through imagery and pick out objects - similar to how an MRI works, Krause said. The company's processing software focuses the signal, making it much easier to recognize any anomalies it picks up. Most of Witten's customers are looking for utilities or oil and gas, but he said Witten would welcome branching out into archaeology.

The company surveyed about a half-acre total, Krause said. When the data is translated and "stitched together" into movies, Witten staff will meet with the foundation to help interpret the images.

Klingelhofer said the goal is to resurvey all the areas of interest in the park, where a smattering of artifacts have been unearthed. No solid evidence of a 16th-century fort, settlement, village, burial ground or even a building has ever been found in Fort Raleigh.

Remote sensing was used in 2000, he said, but archaeologists have never used such cutting-edge technology to explore the purported location of the Lost Colony. Klingelhofer said the results will be available to the team before a planned May excavation of an intriguing anomaly detected years ago.

"That is very exciting," he said. "This is going to be an interesting spring."

Catherine Kozak, (252) 441-1711, cate.kozak@pilotonline.com