Abstract
The regular application of geophysical survey techniques to evaluate archaeological sites is well established as a method for locating, defining, and mapping buried archaeological materials. However, it is not always feasible to apply a range of different methods over a particular site or landscape due to constraints in time or funding. This paper addresses the integrated application of three geophysical survey methods over an important archaeological site located in south Italy. In particular, it is focused on the results achieved from a past geophysical survey and the ongoing excavations performed by archaeologists in the site of Muro Leccese. Muro Leccese (Lecce) is one of the most important Messapian archaeological sites in southern Italy. The archaeological interest of the site was generated since the discovery of the remains of Messapian walls (late 4th–3rd centuries BC). With the aim of widening the archaeological knowledge of the Messapian settlement, several integrated methods, including magnetometry, ground-penetrating radar, and electrical resistivity tomography were used on site to fulfill a number of different research objectives. Since the most important targets were expected to be located at shallow soil depth, a three-dimensional (3D) ground-penetrating radar (GPR) survey was carried out in two zones, which were labeled respectively as zone 1 and zone 2, and were both quite close to the archaeological excavations. The GPR investigations were integrated with a 3D electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) survey in zone 1 and with a magnetometric, in gradiometry configuration survey in zone 2. The integration of several techniques allowed mapping the structural remains of this area and leading the excavation project. The geophysical results show a good correspondence with the archaeological features that were found after the excavation. Current work on the geophysical survey data using different codes for the processing of the data and merging different datasets using a Geographic Information System allowed achieving a user-friendly visualization that was presented to the archaeologists.
Highlights
Geoscience methods are widely used for the detection and investigation of shallow targets
This paper addresses the integrated application of three geophysical survey methods over an important archaeological site located in south Italy
It is focused on the results achieved from a past geophysical survey and the ongoing excavations performed by archaeologists in the site of Muro Leccese
Summary
Geoscience methods are widely used for the detection and investigation of shallow targets. From a geological point of view, the Salento peninsula including the investigated archaeological area is the southernmost emerged part of Adria Plate, which constitutes the foreland of both Apenninic and Dinaric origins It comprises a Variscan basement covered by a 3–5-km thick Mesozoic carbonate sequence (the “Calcari delle Murge” unit) overlain by thin Tertiary and Quaternary deposits. Sinkholes are the main karstic landforms in many sectors of Salento, affecting all the outcropping carbonate rocks, including the Cretaceous limestone, the Oligocene, Miocene, and Plio-Pleistocene calcarenites, and the Middle and Upper Pleistocene terraced marine deposits They are widespread, especially along the low elevated rocky platforms occurring on both the Adriatic and Ionian coasts, and display different typologies and states of activity. Several horizontal depth slices were analyzed to observe the extension versus depth of the resistivity features
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