AVVISI:
Presentazione del corso di Geophysics for Archaeology.
Besides geological applications, geophysical methods are shown to be able to measure not only the physical properties of soil and rocks, but also the anthropically induced effects. Among them , the archaeological sites play a significant role as as a significant part of the historical and cultural heritage of a country.
Geophysics is just one of the most useful techniques used to aid the archaeologists’ understanding by covering ground much more quickly than can be done by excavation.
Geophysical techniques have been developed over a number of decades, but they have come much more to the fore since the turn of this century as a result of the massive improvement in computer power and data logging. As a result, almost no team of archaeologists starts now an excavation campaign without having the information provided by the interpretation of the results obtained by a preliminary geophysical survey.
This course will help the students to learn the theoretical basis of the main physical-mineralogical properties of the shallow ground subsurface causing geophysical anomalies (density, magnetic susceptibility, relative dielectric constant, electrical resistivity). The students will understand the correlations between spatial variations of these properties and their surface effects measured by means of geophysical instrumentation (gravity, magnetic field intensity, electric potential, reflection of electromagnetic waves).
They will be finally able to know the main techniques of acquisition, analysis, processing and interpretation of geophysical anomalies for the identification and charac