N. Doneus1, M. Doneus1, W. Neubauer1,2
1 Inst. for Pre- and Protohistory, Vienna, Austria
2 VIAS - Vienna Inst. for Archaeological Science, Austria

To understand the development of prehistoric cultural and economic activities, archaeologists try to obtain as much relevant information as possible. Today, a wide range of prospection methods are available providing the archaeologist with different results and clues to a site's interpretation. To be able to retrieve a maximum of information the prospection data have to be combined and (re-)interpreted together.
In the present case study we were able to apply a great variety of different prospection methods on the archaeological site of Zwingendorf, a multi-period settlement in the north eastern part of Austria expanding over an area of 8 hectares.
The results from aerial archaeology, magnetics, topographic survey, soil probing, analysis of old maps, extensive field surveys, and two small scaled rescue excavations were interpreted together using GIS applying statistical tools and spatial analysis. The analysis shows the huge potential of combined prospection techniques. The archaeological evaluation of the prospection data revealed a multi-period site in its environmental setting. Different settlement phases could be visualised by finds density maps and sometimes associated with settlement features derived from aerial archaeology and magnetics.