At a glance: Point One’s RTK corrections network is revolutionizing anthropological archaeology by providing a seamless, highly accurate, and affordable alternative to traditional base stations. The University of Pennsylvania is using this technology in its digital archaeology curriculum, allowing students to conduct centimeter-level mapping of archaeological sites.
The Geodetic Benchmark Problem
Archaeological fieldwork has always been exacting. Mapping a Roman kiln field along the Tiber River. Documenting pre-contact settlements in Sicily. Recording threatened cemeteries in Philadelphia. The work demands centimeter-level spatial precision, artifacts, structures, and landscape features need exact coordinates to be scientifically meaningful.
For decades, that precision came with a price: setting up a physical base station over a known geodetic benchmark. Find the benchmark. Transport the equipment. Establish line of sight. Configure the receiver. Wait for initialization. Only then could fieldwork begin.
This workflow created a bottleneck. Large-scale surveys became logistically complex. Remote sensing techniques like ground-penetrating radar and lidar (which depend on consistent, high-accuracy positioning) were constrained by setup time and equipment limitations. Field crews spent hours on positioning infrastructure before they could focus on archaeology.
Jason T. Herrmann, an anthropological archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials (CAAM), watched this play out repeatedly. The technology existed for precise digital mapping. The barrier was operational: base stations limited where and how quickly teams could work.
RTK Network: Infrastructure You Don't Transport
Point One Navigation’s RTK corrections network eliminated the base station entirely.
Instead of relying on a single physical receiver in the field, network RTK pulls correction data from distributed reference stations. The result: centimeter-level GNSS accuracy without the setup ritual, without the line-of-sight requirements, without the equipment transport logistics.
For Herrmann, the criteria were straightforward: coverage, cost, and integration simplicity. Point One delivered on all three.
“It only required my mobile phone and a hotspot,” Herrmann explains. “No more than a minute to set up or switch instrument activation, from GNSS receiver to UAV, for example.”
One minute. That’s the setup time that replaced hours of base station configuration. Field crews could now dedicate their time to archaeology instead of equipment logistics.
What Changes in the Field
Building Rome: The Tiber River Project
Along the Tiber River, Herrmann’s team maps the distribution of ancient tile and brick kilns, which were essential infrastructure for Rome’s material production. The project integrates multiple data streams: magnetic gradiometry to locate kilns, lidar to reveal relict landscape features like ancient roads and clay quarries, surface mapping to connect structures with artifact distributions.
RTK corrections are “essential.” They guide magnetic surveys that successfully locate kilns and surrounding structures. Corrections control large-scale lidar collection, ensuring consistent accuracy across seasons and among multiple investigators. The precision requirement wasn’t negotiable, integrating datasets from different years and different teams only works if the spatial foundation is rock-solid.
Point One’s RTK provided that foundation without the operational overhead.
Monte Castellazzo di Poggioreale, Sicily
At this multi-period Elymian settlement, Point One’s network anchored an integrated survey approach. The team used RTK to establish artifact collection grids, map features from previous investigations, and guide magnetic gradiometry. Most critically, it controlled lidar collection that produced a sub-2cm resolution map of the entire site.
That map—revealing microtopography, vegetation patterns, and surface feature distributions—becomes the cornerstone for future research. Excavation planning, surface survey design, landscape interpretation: all depend on spatial data accurate enough to detect subtle terrain variations and structural remains.
Fort Mifflin, Philadelphia
At Fort Mifflin, Point One’s network eliminated manual survey grid setup entirely. The technology controlled ground-penetrating radar data collection, allows the team to rapidly integrate RTK GNSS and GPR datasets into 3D subsurface imaging.
The result: immediate visualization of how the fort’s use changed over three centuries, informing excavation planning without weeks of post-processing delay.
The time savings were substantial. More importantly, the workflow became flexible: teams could respond to field discoveries in real-time rather than being locked into pre-established survey grids.
Teaching the Next Generation
Herrmann leads “Intro to Digital Archaeology” at UPenn, where students learn these methods on real projects. The current focus is documentation and preservation of threatened African American cemeteries in Philadelphia.
Students use Point One’s technology to record headstone locations, establish photogrammetry control points, and guide geophysical and aerial surveys. They’re not learning archaeology in abstract, they’re collecting data that matters, on sites facing immediate threats from development and environmental degradation.
The pedagogical value extends beyond technical skills. Students learn to think spatially, integrate different data types, and apply precision positioning to solve research questions. They graduate knowing that professional-grade archaeological technology isn’t locked behind institutional barriers or equipment budgets. Now it’s accessible, user-friendly, and deployable anywhere in the world.
This democratization matters. As archaeological sites face accelerating threats from climate change and development, the ability to rapidly document them with scientific precision becomes critical. Training students on systems they can actually afford to use after graduation expands who can do this work.
When Precision Becomes Practical
Archaeological research has always valued spatial accuracy. The constraint was never scientific, it’s always been operational. Base stations worked, but they imposed workflow limitations that restricted where, when, and how efficiently teams could collect data.
Point One’s RTK network removes those restrictions. Setup measured in minutes instead of hours. Coverage that follows cellular networks instead of line-of-sight requirements. Equipment switching that happens on a phone instead of through hardware reconfiguration.
The University of Pennsylvania’s CAAM demonstrates what becomes possible when precision positioning infrastructure disappears into the background. Researchers focus on archaeology. Students learn methods they can deploy independently. Sites threatened by development get documented before they’re lost.
Building applications for field research, surveying, or spatial data collection? Point One Navigation’s RTK network delivers centimeter-level GNSS accuracy without base stations—just cellular connectivity and correction data that works anywhere in coverage.