Usefulness of electrical and magnetic methods in finding buried structure of the Alabanda Ancient Cistern in Çine Town, Aydın City, Turkey

Abstract

In this paper, the Electrical Resistivity Tomography and magnetic methods, including Tilt Angle and Euler Deconvolution, have been used in a comperative manner to determine the lineaments and depths of buried archeological structures. The zero contours of the tilt angle correspond to the boundaries of buried structures and the half distance between ±π/4 rad corresponds to the depth to the top of the structures. Also, in order to estimate the positions and depths of buried structures in the study area, the Euler Deconvolution method was applied to the total magnetic field data. All of the methods have a good correlation about determination of the horizontal locations and depths of the buried structures. The archeological excavations based on the geophysical investigations have demonstrated that the buried structure is an ancient cistern building because of the unearthed pools. Therefore, the interpretations of the geophysical methods and fiction of the paper were made according to the ancient cistern building. With this study, a buried ancient cistern structure was modeled and revealed by the geophysical methods for the first time. Additionally, using of these geophysical techniques in a comparative manner for the archaeogeophysical work will greatly contribute to future studies.