Comparison of measuring strategies for the 3-D electrical resistivity imaging of tumuli

Abstract

Artificial erected hills like tumuli, mounds, barrows and kurgans comprise monuments of the past human activity and offer opportunities to reconstruct habitation models regarding the life and customs during their building period. These structures also host features of archeological significance like architectural relics, graves or chamber tombs. Tumulus exploration is a challenging geophysical problem due to the complex distribution of the subsurface physical properties, the size and burial depth of potential relics and the uneven topographical terrain. Geoelectrical methods by means of three-dimensional (3-D) inversion are increasingly popular for tumulus investigation. Typically data are obtained by establishing a regular rectangular grid and assembling the data collected by parallel two-dimensional (2-D) tomographies. In this work the application of radial 3-D mode is studied, which is considered as the assembly of data collected by radially positioned Electrical Resistivity Tomography (ERT) lines. The relative advantages and disadvantages of this measuring mode over the regular grid measurements were investigated and optimum ways to perform 3-D ERT surveys for tumuli investigations were proposed. Comparative test was performed by means of synthetic examples as well as by tests with field data. Overall all tested models verified the superiority of the radial mode in delineating bodies positioned at the central part of the tumulus while regular measuring mode proved superior in recovering bodies positioned away from the center of the tumulus. The combined use of radial and regular modes seems to produce superior results in the expense of time required for data acquisition and processing.