Tracing a major Roman road in the area of ancient Helike by resistivity tomography

Abstract

In his journey through Achaea in the second century AD, Pausaniasmentioned the destroyed Classical site of Helike on the sea and noted that its ruins were stillvisible underwater near the southwest shore of the Corinthian Gulf. In 2001, the Helike Project excavators discovered on the coastal plain of Helike southeast of Aigionthefirst ruinsof Classicalbuildings, buriedunderlagoonsediments 3 mdeep.They also foundsegmentsofamajor Romanroad oriented NW^SE andburied1^1.50 m deepunder the contemporary surface. Pausanias referred to the main road through the Helike plain, which he followed during his visit. According to his description, he saw the submerged ruins of Helike toward the sea north of the Roman road.Tracing the exact location of the road would, therefore, help to locate the lost city.We employed resistivity tomography to explore the areas between trenches where the road had been unearthed and also to investigate its possible extension beyond those locations. Since 2004, resistivity studies performed by grids or single profiles have been carried out at 11 locations. As a result, theancient roadwasdetected foralength ofabout 2 km.It wasalsoimagedeitherintwo-dimensionalor three-dimensionalcontexts at allthelocationswhereit wasdetected

Palaeoenvironments and palaeotopography of a multilayered city during the Etruscan and Roman periods: early interaction of fluvial processes and urban growth at Pisa (Tuscany, Italy)

“…In a key-portion of the study area, close to Piazza Duomo and to the medieval city walls, an Electrical Resistivity Tomography (ERT) profile was acquired to obtain information about palaeochannel geometries. The application of ERT in conjunction with targeted coring has been proposed in different archaeological contexts (Campana and Piro, 2009;Papadopoulos et al, 2010;Tsokas et al, 2009;Ullrich et al, 2007) (Fig. 3).…”

Submergence and uplift of settlements in the area of Helike, Greece, from the Early Bronze Age to late antiquity

“…The road was excavated in nine trenches, which allowed us to trace its straight course for 800 m (Katsonopoulou, 2002(Katsonopoulou, , 2011a. Tsokas et al (2009) detected the road with electrical tomography and extended its known length to 1300 m, as shown by the straight line in Figure 3. The trenches ranged in area from ca.…”

Object-based model verification by a genetic algorithm approach: Application in archeological targets

“…There are several studies that show the effectiveness and the limitations of the ERT method for locating and delimiting archeological targets. Among many others, some recent examples include Candansayar and Başokur (2001), Papadopoulos et al (2006), Papadopoulos et al (2009) andTsokas et al (2009). Moreover, Cardarelli et al (2006) and Cardarelli et al (2010) applied ERT to explore cavities.…”