The Iron Age Necropolis of El Toro (Alcubillas, Ciudad Real-Spain)—Combination of Archaeological and Geophysical Techniques with Ground Penetrating Radar in the Area around the Jabalón River

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I do wonder whether reprocessing the CWSF data with a more equivalent frequency range to the bandpass filtered impulse system, may improve the visual comparison between the two systems? I hope you will also be able to consider my comments in the annotated PDF of your manuscript with respect to additional details that I think many readers may find of use.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1,
First of all, I would like to thank you on behalf of myself and the team for the review work done. The attached document answers the points to be modified.

Best regards.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Interesting paper but a difficult case study...

Points 1 to 4 must be adressed in the new version.

My first remark was about that the position of the site was not depicted in first figure; I found later in the article that this was for security reasons. Perhaps it would be better to say this from the beginning (line 76 for ex. instead of line 114).

An important thing is missing for different figures : the depth of the georadar slices. Also the velocity used 10cm/ns : was it computed (hyperbola, CMP, etc.)  or just set as the most probable speed? ( 10cm/ns is a stadard by default). This should be clearly written.

Point 3 : Magnetometer data : these are normaly a vertical pseudo-gradient of the vertical Earth Magnetic Field: the units are in nT/m not nT.

Point 4 : There is no clear explanation of the reason why you discard the anomalous zone to the south - which is the strongest in terms of amplitudes! Geology I suppose ?

Point 5 : Your mag data are a bit ackward from my point of view. The lateral continuity between stripes is not evident showing that instrument is not used properly, or difficult conditions in the field? The order of magnitude is more close to the signature of metallic objects... you know that most of the maps in archaeology are between -10 and 10 nT/m.

Point 6 : Conclusions for SFCW radar are correlated to what is known from litterature for the depth of investigation, but NOT for spatial resolution (specially when comparison with pulse radar at 200 MHz). This has to do with soil conditions as you stated. It would be interesting to have an idea of the average electrical resistivity in your field.

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Anyway bravo for this  publication.

Best wishes

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2,
Thank you very much for your comments, which we have interpreted as very constructive and positive in order to improve our work. 
The attached document answers points 1 to 4 of the review.
Kind regards from the team.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

It is an interesting text that can be published. The English seems fine to me, as do the introduction and résumé. That the authors keep the exact location of the site secret because they are worried about looters is perhaps understandable, but it shows that they have not yet found a consistent way of dealing with this problem. Certainly the risk exists, but by setting up a group of volunteers to regularly search and look after the site on behalf of the heritage management, the danger can be better reduced than by secrecy, which does not work anyway - the illegal detectorists certainly already know where this site is.

The illustrations could be improved. As an archaeologist, I would be interested in an illustration of the finds mentioned on p. 3/4, ideally also of excavation situations. A landscape photograph would also be nice. This could greatly increase the attractiveness and expressiveness of the text for all readers, but the authors must decide for themselves. Illustrating exclusively with geophysical plans is not very attractive, especially since there is so much not to see. In Figure 1, the legend has to be translated from Spanish into English. In Fig. 1, left centre, you can also see a red area/dot - is this the site? In Fig. 2 I don't understand why the southern part of the study area, which also shows at least two agglomerations of yellow-marked anomalies, is not also considered as "area with the highest accumulation". Why is the survey actually so stripy - was it not possible to produce an area-wide picture? Perhaps this should be explained. Fig. 14 is not perfect: No. A looks strange (is that the photograph from a screen?), I cannot locate it immediately in the overall plan, the marked anomalies are somewhat primitively executed and the colours are not explained. Line 476/77 is a sentence construction error (wide range of properties).

However, most of the criticisms are rather marginal and only suggestions for the authors. They do not speak against the publication of the otherwise fine and successful article.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 3
First of all, thank you for your comments in order to improve our article. Your comments have been taken into account and have been answered in the attached document.
We would like to express our sincere thanks for your work.
Please receive a cordial greeting from the research team. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

You have answered most of my remarks.  (only the one related to why you skip the most southern -and strongest-  anomaly was not answered : geological origin?).

Thank you.

Author Response

Dear Revisor,

Please find attached below the response to your point 1.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Seems to be fine now

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for your suggestions and comments. 
The indications have been changed in the new version of the manuscript.