Radio wave techniques for non-destructive archaeological investigations

Abstract

"Geophysical techniques can be effectively applied to produce an image of buried targets in a host medium, through. the detection of the ‘boundaries’ between materials having different values of a specific physical property. Over the. last 30 years these methods have been increasingly used to detect the presence of archaeological ruins in the. subsurface, thus reducing extensive, destructive, time consuming and expensive excavations. Recently, ground. penetrating radar (GPR) has become the most important physical technique in archaeological investigations. (allowing for the detection of archaeological targets with both very high vertical and horizontal resolution) and has. been successfully applied also to diagnostic purposes in historical buildings and monuments. In this article an. overview of the use of radio waves in archaeology is presented, first introducing the main physical concepts of GPR,. then presenting some examples of its application to detect ancient buried structures, showing the potential and the. limits of such a method.

A posteriori GPR Evaluation of Tree Stability: A Case Study in Rome (Italy)

“…There are different ways to acquire the GPR data. In the reflection mode (the one used in this paper), antennas are in a fixed configuration (constant separation) and moved over the ground, providing a section that shows TWT time to the GPR reflectors on the vertical axis versus the antennas' position along the horizontal axis; in this representation, each trace corresponds to a specific antennas' position on the surface [28][29][30][31].…”

Characterization of Cavities Using the GPR, LIDAR and GNSS Techniques

“…The study of the different types of natural and manmade cavities is important to the fields of geology, geophysics, engineering, architecture, agriculture, heritages and landscapes (LÓ PEZ-GETA 2002;DEPARIS et al 2008;JOL 2009;PETTINELLI et al 2011). Geodetection is a noninvasive technique that is suitable for the accurate location of buried structures underground.…”

“…More recently, KEUSCHNIG et al (2010) and HARTMEYER and KEUSCHNIG (2012) used a multidisciplinary approach based on GPR, ERT and LIDAR to investigate the stability responses of rock faces to climate change in high mountain areas. These techniques are also widely used in subsoil research for other purposes such as archaeology (CONYERS and GOODMAN 1997;PETTINELLI et al 2011), underground water contamination (LÓ PEZ-GETA 2002), the general location of structures and anomalies in the subsoil, and localization and mapping of underground urban services (YOUNG and LORD 2002;FRANCESE and MORELLI 2006;FRANCESE et al 2009). RODRÍGUEZ-GONZÁ LVEZ et al…”

Ground-Penetrating Radar technique to investigate historic eruptions on the Mt. Etna volcano (Sicily, Italy)

“…Thus, GPR is perfectly suited to imaging the horizons that mark intervals between eruptive events. A number of studies have capitalized on GPR's capabilities in volcanic settings [9], [10] [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], and [20], but none has focused on the 4 different GPR polarizations (Figure 1), used to extract subsurface features information in order to have 3D geological structure reconstruction, electromagnetic nature information and properties of buried reflectors [21], [2], and [22]. The GPR was also used to estimate the size of an active lava tube, as demonstrated in [23] during the eruption of Etna in 1991-1993, in combination also with other geophysical techniques.…”