Abstract
In this work, some results of a GPR survey carried out in a 10000 m2 large archaeological site, located in Lecce (Italy) near to a necropolis dating from the Messapian to the Roman imperial age, are reported. After a preliminary survey, performed on the entire area along parallel 1 m spaced profiles using a 200 MHz and a 500 MHz antenna in single-fold continuous mode, some smaller areas were selected, where the survey was repeated decreasing the profile spacing down to 0.50 m for the lower frequency antenna and to 0.25 m for the higher one. For two selected zones (D and B) the processed data were visualized in 3D space not only by the standard time slice technique, but also by two recently proposed approaches, namely by iso-amplitude surfaces of the complex trace amplitude and by 3D projection of energy and envelope stacks. The immediacy in revealing the spatial positioning of highly reflecting bodies, such as the anomaly interpreted as an old refilled cistern in zone D, makes 3D visualization techniques very attractive in archaeological applications of GPR. Their sensitivity to the signal/noise ratio is, on the other hand, highlighted by the quite poor performance in zone B, where the only reliable result provided by all the techniques was the soil/bedrock reflection, whereas none of them could effectively enhance the visibility of weak dipping reflections noted on 2D sections and probably related to fractures or bedding planes in the calcarenitic basement. The performance of the various techniques in these two different situations allowed insights into their main advantages and drawbacks to be gained.
Highlights
Ground-Penetrating Radar (GPR) is a fast and cost-effective electromagnetic (EM) method which, in favourable conditions, i.e. mainly resistive non-magnetic environments, can provide valuable information on the shallowThe increasing need for detailed 3D imaging of the shallow subsurface makes 3D GPR one Luigia Nuzzo, Giovanni Leucci, Sergio Negri, Maria Teresa Carrozzo and Tatiana Quarta of the most important current topics
The significant advantages of 3D georadar surveying are well documented, especially for mapping geological features (Grasmueck, 1996; Grandjean and Gourry, 1996; Sigurdsson and Overgaard, 1998), the higher horizontal and vertical resolution required in archaeological applications makes 3D GPR more expensive for large-area surveys
Data are processed by means of 1D and 2D techniques, since the crossline spacing is still too large to obtain remarkable improvements from 3D processing techniques
Summary
Ground-Penetrating Radar (GPR) is a fast and cost-effective electromagnetic (EM) method which, in favourable conditions, i.e. mainly resistive non-magnetic environments, can provide valuable information on the shallowThe increasing need for detailed 3D imaging of the shallow subsurface makes 3D GPR one Luigia Nuzzo, Giovanni Leucci, Sergio Negri, Maria Teresa Carrozzo and Tatiana Quarta of the most important current topics. Data are processed by means of 1D and 2D techniques, since the crossline spacing is still too large to obtain remarkable improvements from 3D processing techniques. The latter are very time-consuming and rarely available on common GPR processing software. Widely appreciated, 3D acquisition techniques, using submeter spacing, have been applied only in test-areas of limited extensions or, using a coarser spacing, in larger areas, but to image only large-scale archaeological features (Goodman et al, 1994; Malagodi et al, 1996; Pipan et al, 1999; Basile et al, 2000)
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