Shallow Offshore Geophysical Prospection of Archaeological Sites in Eastern Mediterranean

Nikos Papadopoulos

doi:10.3390/rs13071237

Abstract

Geophysical prospecting methods have been extensively used to outline buried antiquities in terrestrial sites. Despite the frequent application of these mapping and imaging approaches for the detection of archaeological relics in deep-water marine environments (e.g., shipwrecks), the aforementioned processes have minimal contribution when it comes to understanding the dynamics of the past in coastal and shallow aquatic archaeological sites. This work explores the possibilities of multicomponent geophysical techniques in revealing antiquities that have been submerged in diverse shallow coastal marine environments in the eastern Mediterranean. A group of four sites in Greece (Agioi Theodoroi, Olous, Lambayanna) and Cyprus (Pafos) spanning from prehistory to Roman times were chosen as test sites to validate the efficiency of electrical resistivity tomography, magnetic gradiometry, and ground penetrating radar methods. The comprehensive analysis of the geophysical data completed the picture for the hidden archeological elements in all the sites. The results manifest the significance and the potential of these methods for documenting and understanding the complex archaeological sites encountered in the Mediterranean. In view of climate change and the risks related to future sea level rise and erosion of low-level coastal areas, the results of this work could be integrated in a strategic framework to develop an effective interdisciplinary research model that can be applied to similar shallow water archaeological surveys, thus substantially contributing towards cultural resources management.

Highlights

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Conclusions a constantly evolving environment, rendering the littoral zones fragile and cultural resources lying in these zones face risks and threats for coastalInevitably, zones arethe highly dynamic systems showing extensive complexity due to the effect of geological and climate change factors that act over different spatial and time scales [24]

Summary

Introduction

The study and documentation of Cultural Heritage (CH) is rapidly developing, at times favoring or even pushing the progress of technologies and equipment in place for the digitalization of items and landscapes. The technological and methodological innovations allowed it to pass from an “amateur” activity to a proper scientific field of research with substantial contribution in the domains of past commerce and coast exploitations. In this sense, most of the efforts so far have been placed in deep water context explorations, where specific factors that do not apply in other archaeological research—like pressure, visibility, oxygen availability—need to be taken into account for the successful implementation of the research activity [2]

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Conclusion