The analysis of two unexcavated bathing complexes in Falerii Novi (Italy) by Konogan Beaufay was just published as a contribution in the latest volume of the MacDonald Monograph series—accessible in open access here (see pages 99-111).

The GPR investigation of the entire city of Falerii Novi, completed by Lieven Verdonck and whose data was jointly analysed by a team of scholars and professors from Cambridge and Ghent (Lieven Verdonck, Martin Millett, Alessandro Launaro and Frank Vermeulen), revealed the full urban grid of the city with its numerous public and private buildings—including two clearly recognisable sets of baths.

This provided the perfect opportunity to attempt an analysis of a bath building without resorting to an excavation (at least for now). Using all forms of evidence available from the GPR data—room shapes, walls orientation and thickness, openings in the walls, surface reflections, depth of the remains—as well as comparative material from other baths in central Italy, Konogan has attempted a reconstruction of the likely design of the building and rooms, their function, the circulation within them, and provided a possible dating.

The exercise is certainly tentative, and an eventual excavation would confirm (or invalidate) the hypotheses and clarify a lot of the unknowns. At any rate, multiplying this type of exercise and confronting it with the actual remains has great potential in helping us understand GPR signals better and prepare more effectively for future excavations.