Searching for the Antigonea Theatre: A Magnetic Survey in an Ancient Epirus City

Abstract

We report on two magnetic surveys performed in July and September 2015 at the ancient Hellenistic city of Antigonea,\ud located in southern Albania. The main objective of the two surveys was to find the city theatre and determine possible\ud sites of future excavations. We suggest a new technique for dense collecting of magnetic data along difficult terrains,\ud with minimization of the topographic effect. Evidence of a possible location of the theatre was found along the\ud southern slope of the Jermë hill, just outside the city walls. Other interesting structures indicate the presence of many\ud other buildings in this part of the Antigonea settlement

Magnetic field modelling and analysis of uncertainty in archaeological geophysics

“…To assign geographic coordinates to the data set, a computer algorithm calculates the best‐fitting rigid transformation from local coordinates to UTM by weighted least squares minimization of corner location errors relative to the measured GPS locations. In the event of rugged terrain, magnetic data acquisition proceeds along curved survey lines (Figure (b)) and is accompanied by GPS positioning (Schettino, Çondi, Perna, Pierantoni, & Ghezzi, ). In both cases, a survey is performed only when the value of the solar activity index, K p , does not indicate magnetic storm conditions ( K p < 5).…”

“…Example of diurnal drift curve R ( t ), obtained by cubic polynomial fitting of crossover errors ε i = T ( C i , t ) – T ( C i , t 0 ) (red dots). These data were acquired at the Antigonea archaeological site (southern Albania) in 2015 (Schettino et al, ) in rugged terrain conditions using a global positioning system (GPS). The average positioning error was ~0.5 m, thereby these example shows very unfavourable survey conditions [Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]…”

“…We performed magnetic and ground‐penetrating radar (GPR) surveys in the area of Gjirokastër, southern Albania, during five campaigns between 2015 and 2017 (e.g. Schettino et al, ). Here we will focus on the data acquired at the archaeological site of Hadrianopolis, while a comprehensive analysis of the results obtained during the five missions will be published separately.…”