Electrical and electromagnetic techniques applied to an archaeological framework reconstructed in laboratory

Ground penetrating radar (GPR) and electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) are typical geophysical techniques applied into archaeological context thanks to their capability to study variations of physical attributes of buried objects in the soil causing electric and electromagnetic contrasts compared to the behaviour of the surrounding environment. Unfortunately sometimes these contrasts are difficult to define for several reasons including strong attenuation of signals introduced into the soil, limited depth and low resolution of investigation related to instrumentation characteristics. Great efforts are required to understand the complexity of the relationship between archaeological features and their geophysical response and give an effective interpretation of resulting data. For this reason an experimental activity has been performed at the Hydrogeosite laboratory focused on the assessment of the capability of geophysical techniques to detect archaeological remains placed in humid or saturated subsoil.