Using muons to uncover ancient archaeology

Hidden beneath the Earth’s modern surface lies the ancient world, full of chambers and tunnels waiting for archaeologists to excavate. Finding these often requires guesswork and luck, but Benhammou et al. demonstrated another way to look for them.

To help identify underground features, the researchers used cosmic ray muons, produced when high-energy particles from space collide with molecules in Earth’s atmosphere. These muons penetrate the Earth and can reveal voids beneath its surface.

They tested this technique in an ancient underground cistern in Jerusalem, dating back to at least the fifth century B.C.E. Comparing data collected with their muon detector — which is about the size of a large suitcase and operates on a single power cable and a cell phone’s data connection — to lidar sensing data, they not only verified their technique worked to identify a known shaft in the cistern, but also found something new, something they initially thought might be a glitch.

“That moment — when the data revealed a hidden structure we weren’t even looking for — was genuinely exciting,” said author Erez Etzion. “It proved that the detector wasn’t just repeating what we already knew. It was helping us discover.”

They had found a second shaft, which they later verified with lidar to provide additional confidence in the technique.

With muon imaging validated, it can transform how archaeological sites are surveyed, providing non-invasive insights into how ancient societies organized water, storage, and movement.

“Our goal is to revolutionize archaeological research by enabling researchers at each site to obtain a complete subterranean 3D mapping even before excavation, allowing them to excavate according to the map of the subterranean spaces,” said author Oded Lipschits.

Source: “First demonstration of underground muon imaging at an archaeological site in ancient Jerusalem,” by Y. Benhammou, E. Etzion, Y. Gadot, O. Lipschits, G. Mizrachi, Y. Shalev, Y. Silver, A. Weissbein, and I. Zolkin, Journal of Applied Physics (2025). The article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0273376 .

This paper is part of the Muography: Discoveries, Innovations, and Applications Collection, learn more here .