Case history: integrated geophysical survey at Katarínka Monastery (Slovakia)

Wilken, Dennis; Wunderlich, Tina; Stümpel, Harald; Rabbel, Wolfgang; Pašteka, Roman; Erkul, Ercan; Papčo, Juraj; Putiška, René; Krajňák, Martin; Kušnirák, Dávid

doi:10.3997/1873-0604.2015027

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Although magnetic surveys are still the backbone of an archaeological survey it is often only in combination with other methods possible to interpret the geophysical results correctly. These complementing methods include ground-penetrating radar (GPR) (e.g., [4,5]), electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) (e.g., [6][7][8]), electromagnetic induction (EMI) (e.g., [9]) to different sorts of seismic methods ( [10][11][12][13]). Whereas multi-ha-scale areas can be surveyed easily with magnetics and GPR in plain open area, the terrain conditions found on the Corinthian Rift are more difficult, and the rather small contrasts between geological background and the cultural remains mostly excludes the use of magnetics.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geological Challenges of Archaeological Prospecting: The Northern Peloponnese as a Type Location of Populated Syn-Rift Settings

et al. 2020

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The Northern Peloponnese is not only home of a series of ancient poleis that are being studied by archaeologists, but it is also located on the southern shoulder of the most active extensional crustal structure in the world; the Corinthian rift. This rift has shaped the Northern Peloponnese as we now see it today since the Pliocene. Normal faulting, the tectonic uplift of syn-rift sediments and sea level changes, has shaped a landscape of steps rising from the coast to the ridges in the hinterland that provides challenging conditions to a geophysical survey. Where we can find coarse grained slope and delta deposits of conglomerate on top of banks of marl on ridges and slopes, the lower marine terraces and the coastal plain as well as valleys show the protective caprock eroded and the marl covered by young alluvial deposits. These materials show only a small contrast in their magnetic properties, which reduces the importance of magnetic mapping for the archaeological prospection in this region. The human utilization of the coastal plain and the urban areas pose additional challenges. These challenges have been overcome through various approaches that are shown in exemplary case studies from Aigeira and Sikyon. Whereas a combination of magnetic mapping and ground-penetrating radar (GPR) works very well on the ridges and along the slopes where we find coarser sediments in addition to the magnetic mapping, it is not suitable in the coastal plain due to the attenuating properties of the alluvial sediment. Here, electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) proved to be very successful in mapping entire parts of a settlement in great detail. Seismic soundings were also sucessfully applied in determining the bedrock depth, the detection of walls and in the question of locating the harbor basin. In the presented six exemplary case studies, the following findings were made: (1) A fortification wall and building foundations at a depth of 0.4–1.2 m on a plateau northwest of the acropolis of Aigeira was found by 400 MHz GPR. (2) A honeycomb-shaped pattern of magnetic anomalies that suggested cavities could be identified as a weathering pattern of conglomerate rocks. (3) A rock basement 2.3 m deep and remains of an enclosing wall of the Aigeira theater area were found by shear wave refraction measurements. (4) Extensive ERT surveys detected several building remains in Sikyon like a potential building and grave monuments as well as several small houses. (5) A silted-up depression in the sediments of the coastal plane located through Love wave measurements, could be taken as evidence for either a silted harbor or a navigable riverbed.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geological Challenges of Archaeological Prospecting: The Northern Peloponnese as a Type Location of Populated Syn-Rift Settings

et al. 2020

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“…In these cases, a frequently conducted first step is broadening the spectrum of applied prospection methods providing other, possibly indicative, physical subsurface parameters, for example complementing standard magnetic mapping by ground‐penetrating radar (GPR; e.g., Davis & Annan, 1989; Trinks et al, 2018; Wilken et al, 2015) or electrical resistivity tomography (ERT; e.g., Loke & Barker, 1995; Papadopoulos et al, 2007; Sporn et al, 2017; Wunderlich et al, 2018), which have often been successful in identifying cultural heritage in the subsurface.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prehistoric chamber tombs or geological pitfall? A multimethod case study from Ancient Aigeira with a focus on seismic full‐waveform inversion

Rusch

Köhn

Stümpel

et al. 2021

Archaeological Prospection

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We show an extensive multimethod geophysical study of focusing on some enigmatic subsurface structures found at Ancient Aigeira (N Peloponnes, Greece) that could be interpreted either as prehistoric chamber tombs or complex weathering patterns of the local marl–conglomerate rock sequences. It turns out that the nonseismic methods do not allow to distinguish between an archaeological and a geological origin of the observed patterns with certainty. In contrast, we demonstrate how shear‐wave seismics and full‐waveform inversion (FWI) can be used in archaeological prospection for distinguishing between these alternative essentially different interpretational models that are not distinguishable through nonseismic prospection data. The example site Aigeira is strategically well located on a hill on the Northern Peloponnese overlooking the Corinthian Gulf and has been inhabited with occupational gaps since Middle Neolithic times until the 12th to early 14th century ce. Magnetics, ground‐penetrating radar (GPR) and electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) reveal a honeycomb‐shaped anomaly pattern that could have been interpreted as a system of prehistoric chamber tombs. The time‐domain SH‐FWI strategy based on a sequential inversion of low‐pass and band‐pass filtered data results in subsurface models for shear‐wave velocity and density that accurately fits the complicated seismic data set. A highly heterogeneous subsurface is revealed that is characterized by linear cracks on a decimetre scale. The seismic FWI results are compared in detail with GPR, ERT and among each other. It turns out that the FWI result is consistent with each of these other geophysical methods but provides a more comprehensive subsurface characterization that it is supported by corings in addition. With the help of the seismic survey, we can reject the interpretation hypothesis of a prehistoric cemetery with chamber tombs and confirm that the enigmatic geophysical patterns represent a geological weathering structure that could be addressed as a reincised fan delta draped by reddish palaeosols.

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“…Gradiometry or total field measurements are frequently applied for magnetic investigations of archaeological sites (Becker, 1995; Bis et al, 2021; Linford et al, 2007; Miller et al, 2019; Pickartz et al, 2019; Wilken et al, 2015). The map of magnetic anomalies is then understood as an image showing magnetic imprints of different archaeological features, for example, ditches, pits or walls, and enabling a determination of their location and approximate size.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On‐site non‐destructive determination of the remanent magnetization of archaeological finds using field magnetometers

Wunderlich

Kahn

Nowaczyk

et al. 2021

Archaeological Prospection

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The determination of the natural remanent magnetization (NRM) of archaeological features can be used for magnetic modelling, joining of shards, archaeomagnetic dating or the investigation of the firing-cooling-collapsing order of ancient buildings.The measurement of NRM is normally conducted on cylindrical or cubic samples in the laboratory. Nevertheless, archaeological finds should preferably not be destroyed, and laboratory instruments are high in costs. Therefore, we propose a lightweight and portable measurement set-up including already available field magnetometers (preferably caesium magnetometers) in which the archaeological sample of arbitrary shape, in our case a piece of daub, is mounted inside a gimbal to be rotated in all directions. The magnetic field of the sample is measured at a large number of rotational positions with the magnetometer kept at fixed position. In these measurements, the unknown direction of the NRM vector of the sample is rotated, whereas the average magnetic susceptibility of the sample and the ambient magnetic field are constant and known. Hence, the vector of NRM can be determined through leastsquares inversion. For the inversion computation, the sample volume is discretized either as voxel model or approximated as an equivalent sphere. Under certain conditions depending on sample-sensor distance, dipole moment and radius of the sample, the approximation by a sphere is valid without effect on the accuracy of results.Empirically determined functions quantifying these conditions for different sensor sensitivities and noise levels are provided. Validation with laboratory measurements on palaeomagnetic subsamples from the destroyed daub samples indicate that the NRM can be determined by our proposed method with a maximum error in

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Case history: integrated geophysical survey at Katarínka Monastery (Slovakia)

Cited by 8 publications

References 10 publications

Geological Challenges of Archaeological Prospecting: The Northern Peloponnese as a Type Location of Populated Syn-Rift Settings

Geological Challenges of Archaeological Prospecting: The Northern Peloponnese as a Type Location of Populated Syn-Rift Settings

Prehistoric chamber tombs or geological pitfall? A multimethod case study from Ancient Aigeira with a focus on seismic full‐waveform inversion

On‐site non‐destructive determination of the remanent magnetization of archaeological finds using field magnetometers

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