This contribution is focused on a common utilization of microgravimetry (very precise and detailed gravimetry) and geoeletrical methods (ground penetrating radar and electric resistivity tomography) in the detection of subsurface cavities in non-destructive archaeological prospection. Both methods can separately detect such kind of subsurface objects, but their complementary and at the same time an eliminating aspect can be very helpful in the interpretation of archaeogeophysical datasets. These properties were shown in various published case-studies. Here we present some more typical examples. Beside this, we present here for a first time an application of the electric resistivity tomography in the interior of a building (a church) in Slovakia. We also demonstrate an example with an extremely small acquisition step in microgravity as a trial for the detection of cavities with very small dimensions -in this case small separated spaces for coffins as a part of the detected crypt (so called columbarium). Unfortunately, these cavities were too small to be reliably detected by the microgravity method. We have tried the well-known 3D Euler deconvolution method to obtain usable depth estimates from the acquired anomalous gravity field. Results from this method were in the majority of cases plausible (sometimes little bit too shallow), when compared with the results from the ground penetrating radar.In one selected example, the 3D Euler solutions were too deep and in the present stage of study we cannot well explain this situation. In general, all presented results support an important role of common combination of several geophysical methods, when searching for subsurface cavities in non-destructive archaeological prospection.
Detailed and precise measurement of the Earth's gravity field (microgravity method) can be effectively used for the detection and quantification of subsurface voids and/or cavities. There exist a variety of successful applications of the microgravity method in near surface geophysics, namely in geotechnical, environmental and archaeological prospection. Using state-of-the-art 'microgal' relative gravity meters, cavities of several metres in each dimension (positioned at a similar depth) can be detected and interpreted. Such objects produce negative anomalies with amplitudes of several tens of microGals (1 microGal = 10 −8 m s −2). This contribution is focused on a methodological overview of the most important acquisition and processing steps in archaeological microgravimetry. In the processing of acquired gravimetrical data into a Bouguer anomaly, the so-called building correction plays an important role, because the gravitational effect of building masses can produce false, usually negative anomalies. Several selected methods for quantitative interpretation are presented, these are based on depth estimation and density modelling. These interpretation methods give satisfactory results in the case of these type of negative anomalies that are caused by subsurface cavities. Microgravimetry can obtain good support from electromagnetic and electrical methods, mainly from ground penetrating radar and electrical resistivity tomography, respectively. Finally, we present successful case-studies of microgravimetrical detection of crypts in various churches from the Middle Ages and period of Modern History, surveyed during recent decades in Slovakia and Czechia.
Interpretation and inversion of microgravity anomalies belong to important tasks of near-surface geophysics, mostly in cavities detection in engineering, environmental and archaeological applications. One of the mostly used concepts of inversion in applied gravimetry is based on the approximation of the model space by means of 2D or 3D elementary sources with the aim to estimate their densities by means of the solution of a corresponding linear equation system. There were published several approaches trying to obtain correct and realistic results, which describe real parameters of the sources. In the proposed contribution we analyse the properties of two additional functionals, which describe additional properties of the searched solution – namely so-called L2-smoothing and minimum support focusing stabilizers. For the inversion itself, we have used the regularized conjugate gradient method. We have studied properties of these two stabilizers in the case of one synthetic model and one real-world dataset (microgravity data from St. Nicholas church in Trnava). Results have shown that proposed algorithm with the minimum support stabilizer can generate satisfactory model results, from which we can describe real geometry, dimensions and physical properties of interpreted cavities.
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