The location of the study area for this research of a Middle Bronze Age Necropolis is situated in the west of Turkey near Afyonkarahisar.Magnetic surveying was carried out in two adjacent areas (Areas 4 and 5). Four trenches have been excavated so far and graves were located in positions interpreted from a magnetic survey carried out in 2005. Initial excavations have shown that cist, pithos and simple graves were placed randomly and it is suggested that Dedemezari Necropolis is similar to the well known necropoleis of Gordion and Sariket.This paper compares the results of some phase-based filters which show improved performance as edge detectors in different ways.The filters are demonstrated on synthetic magnetic data and magnetic field data from Dedemezari Necropolis.Magnetic field derivatives, both vertical and horizontal, are common and useful tools for interpretation of the magnetic anomalies. Interpretation of magnetic field derivatives, separately or together, provide images of shallow bodies from magnetic data.The horizontal derivatives of the totalmagnetic field were computed in the space domain by means of finite-difference relationships, and the vertical derivative was computed in the frequency domain by using fast Fourier transform filtering.Derivatives of the magnetic anomalies have been used for detection of causative bodies. The analytic signal (AS), the enhanced horizontal derivative (EHD), tilt derivative (TD), theta map, hyperbolic tilt angle (HTA) and total horizontal derivative (THDR) methods were applied not only to synthetic anomalies but also to the measured magnetic anomalies of Areas 4 and 5. However, AS and EHD produced the best results as the other methods created edge effects. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.