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Landscape plays a vital role in the development of military campaigns through the definition of geostrategic landmarks that structure the control of the territory, the imposition of constraints to the movement of armies, and the identification of positions that facilitate defensive tactics against aggressors. These factors are linked to the study of past spatial mobility which is typically performed using Least-Cost Path analysis (LCP). LCP identifies the optimal route that connects any two given points based on minimizing the accumulated cost based on a friction surface map, thus allowing archaeologists to identify the most efficient pathways across a territory. The main challenge of LCP analysis for archaeological regions is that optimal pathways are not well suited to define general mobility patterns within highly uncertain scenarios. Connectivity modelling based on Circuit Theory (CT) is an alternative approach to the study of mobility. CT does not generate a single path like LCP does; it captures the connectivity of an entire region identifying not only optimal paths, but also bottlenecks, dead-ends and any other spatial feature that may impact movement.We present here a framework to study landscapes of conflict using connectivity modelling; the framework combines CT, visibility analysis and statistical hypothesis testing to understand the reasons behind the assault and destruction of Puig Ciutat (NE Iberian Peninsula) during Julius Caesar's civil war. Results suggest that the site exerted decisive control over a highly connected area linking two possible logistical bases (Emporion and Massalia) to the armies fighting at Ilerda (49 BC).

We used GPR to delineate a building excavated in the 19th century. Data from old excavations and geophysical surveys are incorporated in the methodology applied to developer-led archaeology in France. The case study exemplifies the benefits of a cross-disciplinary approach as to allow a better interpretation of archaeological data.

Archaeological evidence discovered in the lower levels at the church of Santa Margarida corresponding to a baptismal pool, as well as a monumental tomb covered with a funerary mosaic or lauda, suggest that the baptistery of the episcopium of Empúries was located here and that the tomb could have belonged to one of the first Emporitan bishops. These archaeological remains were part of a much more extensive occupation than we were aware about thanks to the photointerpretation and geophysical prospections carried out on adjacent land, with diverse buildings organised by streets or circulation paths, which spread as far as the lower part of the promontory. The displacement of part of the habitat and of the episcopal area to this sector of Empúries could have been caused by the topographical limitations of the nucleus of Sant Marti d’Empúries and probably also by the existence of an estuary zone which, during the 4th to 7th centuries A.D., still existed up to the base of Santa Margarida. Les évidences archéologiques découvertes dans les niveaux au-dessous de l’église de Santa Margarida qui correspondent à une piscine baptismale, ainsi qu’une tombe monumentale recouverte avec une lauda sepulcrale suggèrent qu’à cet endroit se trouvait le baptistère de l’episcopium d’Empúries et que cette tombe aurait appartenu à l’un des premiers évêques emporitains. Ces vestiges archéologiques faisaient partie d’une occupation beaucoup plus vaste que nous connaissons à partir de la photo-interprétation et des prospections géophysiques effectuées dans tout le secteur et qui nous montrent l’existence de plusieurs bâtiments organisés par différents espaces de circulation. Le déplacement d’une partie de l’habitat et de l’ensemble épiscopal vers ce secteur d’Empúries pourrait être du aux limitations topographiques du site de Sant Marti d’Empúries et, probablement aussi, à l’existence d’une zone d’estuaire qui s’étendait jusqu’à Santa Margarida pendant les ive et viie siècles de notre ère.

We present the historical results derived from the first phase of research on this important site, conducted exclusively with non-invasive methods. The data recovered from pedestrian and geophysical prospecting have allowed us to verify the urban condition of the settlement, attested not only by its size, but also by its structural complexity and the nature of the pottery collected, which suggest specialized economic activities and the coexistence of different social sectors. The abandonment of the settlement around 200 BCE confirms the profound impact of the Roman conquest on the settlement patterns of the northern Iberian world.

We present a geophysical survey work in the Roman site of Proendos, Sober, Lugo, Spain, which has been carried out on 27,000 square meters of surface area. From a methodological perspective, two different techniques have been compared on the same plot, Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and magnetometry, showing the pros and cons of each one in granite substrate environments. The results of the chosen method (GPR) have shown a complex and long-term urban reality, part of which can be placed in the Roman period SI

Rural basilicas are the most important evidence of Christianization of the countryside on the island of Mallorca (Balearic Islands, Spain). Recent investigations of rural landscape transformations suggest that some churches were built along communication routes and linked to pre-existing settlements. To obtain new data that could support this hypothesis, a geophysical survey has been carried out at the early Christian complex of Son Peretó, one of the most emblematic sites for the understanding of Late Antiquity on the island. The objective was to better define the site that is undergoing excavation, and to investigate the possible presence of other constructions further than the Christian complex. The geophysical survey was carried out combining magnetometry and groundpenetrating radar. For the magnetic investigation of large site areas, a 7-probe fluxgate gradiometer array LEA MAX was used. GPR was used to examine the areas nearby the remains already excavated and to better define areas where magnetometry revealed interesting anomalies. GPR was developed by means of the IDS GPR system, which was based on the Fast-Wave module. The results revealed both the presence of architectural remains beneath the soil that help define the early Christian complex, as well as other remains that suggest the church was part of a larger settlement.

Paez-Rezende Laurent, Jeanne Laurence, Duclos Caroline, Sala Roger, Ortiz Quintana Helena, Rodriguez Simón Pedro, Garcia-Garcia Ekhine. Actualité des recherches conduites sur l’édifice de spectacle de l’agglomération antique d’Alleaume (Alauna) à Valognes (Manche). In: Aremorica. Études sur l'ouest de la Gaule romaine, n°10, 2021. pp. 25-49.

Two rural sites on the island of Mallorca (Balearic Islands, Spain) have been investigated with geophysical methods. A previous archaeological field survey provided surface ceramics that allowed for a first classification of the sites as possible Roman rural settlements, possibly villae. The objective of the investigation was to work towards the identification of architectural remains to better understand the true nature of the sites. Using the 7-probe fluxgate gradiometer array LEA MAX, magnetic measurements were executed on a large area on each site. GPR measurements were subsequently carried out to examine selected areas of interest in detail by means of the IDS GPR system based on the Fast-Wave module. The investigated areas demonstrated excellent surface conditions with a negligible number of sources of disturbance, permitting a detailed interpretation of the geophysical data. The results helped to reveal the presence of architectural remains beneath the soil at both sites.

This paper presents the results of the investigations carried out from 2009 to 2013 in the multi-period archaeological site of La Dou (Sant Esteve d’en Bas, Girona, Catalonia). The authors expose the strategy applied to create the surveys and results of the excavations conducted to verify and date the detected features. The site was discovered in 2005 in a rescue excavation due to the building of a road, revealing a group of firing pits and other stratigraphic remains of a rare Neolithic, open-air settlement, dated from the 5th millennium BC. In 2009, a team of archaeologists from the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB) created a project to expand the investigations to the cultivation fields surrounding the first findings. A magnetic survey was used to locate new archaeological remains and delimit the possible extents of the site. The results revealed a complex magnetic map that included several groups of anomalies interpreted as possible archaeological remains in an area of circa 2.4 ha. The attention of the team was then focused on a possible ditch detected in the survey and that was partially excavated. The excavation results and the C14 analysis expanded the chronology of the site until the Bronze Age, revealing an uncommon settlement that is still the object of investigations. Le document présente les résultats de la recherche menée entre 2009 et 2013 sur le site archéologique multi-période de La Dou (Sant Esteve d’en Bas, Girona, Catalogne). Les auteurs exposent la stratégie d’exploration appliquée et les résultats des fouilles menées pour vérifier et dater les structures détectées. Le site a été découvert en 2005 lors de fouilles préventives réalisées en raison de la construction d’une route. Elles ont révélé un groupe de structures de combustion et d’autres vestiges stratigraphiques d’un site Néolithique daté du 5e millénaire avant notre ère. En 2009, une équipe d’archéologues de l’Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB) a créé un projet visant à étendre la recherche aux champs entourant les premières structures découvertes. Une prospection magnétique a été réalisée afin de localiser de nouveaux vestiges archéologiques et de délimiter l’étendue du site. Les résultats ont révélé une carte magnétique complexe qui comprend plusieurs groupes d’anomalies interprétées comme de possibles vestiges archéologiques dispersés sur une étendue d’environ 2,4 ha hectares. L’attention de l’équipe a été portée sur une structure interprétée comme un possible fossé et partiellement fouillée. Les résultats des fouilles et des datations au carbone 14 ont permis d’élargir la chronologie du site à l’Âge du bronze et de révéler un établissement humain rare faisant toujours l’objet de recherches.

Archaeological geophysics is a vital part of exploring and documenting cultural heritage. Three of the most commonly used techniques are magnetometry, resistivity, and ground penetrating radar. These methods help archaeological geophysicists to unravel the complexity of many archaeological sites, including urban ones, old buildings, and built structures of cultural importance. However, local factors, such as constraints on time, local environment, pre-existing available information, and budgets, all contribute to a given site requiring unique geophysical surveying strategies. Four Spanish-based, but generally applicable, case studies will illustrate key geophysical strategy types for particular local archaeological conditions.

An integrated geophysical survey has been conducted at the Tarragona’s Cathedral (Catalonia, NE Spain) with the aim to confirm the potential occurrence of archaeological remains of the Roman Temple dedicated to the Emperor Augustus. Many hypotheses have been proposed about its possible location, the last ones regarding the inner part of the Cathedral, which is one of the most renowned temples of Spain (twelfth century) evolving from Romanesque to Gothic styles. A geophysical project including electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) and ground probing radar (GPR) was planned over 1 year considering the administrative and logistic difficulties of such a project inside a cathedral of religious veneration. Finally, both ERT and GPR have been conducted during a week of intensive overnight surveys that provided detailed information on subsurface existing structures. The ERT method has been applied using different techniques and arrays, ranging from standard Wenner–Schlumberger 2D sections to full 3D electrical imaging with the advanced Maximum Yield Grid array. Electrical resistivity data were recorded extensively, making available many thousands of apparent resistivity data to obtain a complete 3D image after a full inversion. In conclusion, some significant buried structures have been revealed providing conclusive information for archaeologists. GPR results provided additional information about shallowest structures. The geophysical results were clear enough to persuade religious authorities and archaeologists to conduct selected excavations in the most promising areas that confirmed the interpretation of geophysical data. In conclusion, the significant buried structures revealed by geophysical methods under the cathedral were confirmed by archaeological digging as the basement of the impressive Roman Temple that headed the Provincial Forum of Tarraco, seat of the Concilium of Hispania Citerior Province.

Salamanca lies on the right bank of the river Tormes, a tributary of the Douro, on the northern sub-plateau of the Iberian peninsula (fig. 1). Although hardly mentioned in Roman historical sources, it is a reference point for work on Roman territory because the surveyor Frontinus (De Agrorum Qualitate [ed. Thulin 1971] 1–2) used Salmantica (in Lusitania) and Palantia (in Citerior) to exemplify ager per extremitatem mensura comprehensus, the system of land organization characteristic of stipendiary cities. Frontinus was writing in Flavian times, but the creation of ager mensura comprehensus in Lusitania occurred in the Augustan period, as is confirmed by remarkable epigraphic documentation. In N Lusitania, a total of 11 boundary-stones (termini Augustales) are known, nine from the reign of Augustus (and two of these provide explicit reference to Salmantica) and two from that of Claudius. The dates provided by Augustus’ tribunicia potestas allow us to date the surveying operations delimiting the urban territories to between A.D. 4–5 (the inscriptions from Peroviseu and Ul) and A.D. 5–6 (the inscriptions from Sao Salvador, Ledesma, Ciudad Rodrigo, and the new one from Jarandilla de la Vera). The Augustan ager mensura comprehensus may have conditioned the model of the subsequent rural settlement by creating a framework for territorial occupation being organized around the villa from the Flavian period on. The villa would dominate the rural countryside, until it disappeared around the first decades of the 5th c. as part of a process that can be associated with the breaking down of imperial authority and the arrival of the Germanic peoples in the year 409. Almost nothing is known about Salamanca’s territory during the Islamic occupation until the first official repopulation took place under the king of Leon, Ramiro II, in 939–49. The lack of attested settlements in the Douro valley between the 8th and 10th c. is a key question for the organization of the border area between the Islamic state of Al-Andalus and the kingdom of Leon, but scholars generally reject the thesis formulated in 1966 by C. Sánchez Albornoz, which tended to present the lands of the Douro valley as practically depopulated.

Geophysical survey methods are broadly used to delimit and characterize archaeological sites, but the archaeological interpretation of geophysical data remains one of the challenges. Indeed, many scenarios can generate a similar geophysical response, and often interpretations can not be validated without access to the subsoil. In large geophysical surveys many anomalies are detected and validation through archaeological trenches can not be afforded. This paper analyses the validity of geoarchaeological core survey to check the archaeological interpretations based on geophysical results. The Roman site located at Auritz/Burguete and Aurizberri/Espinal (Navarre), provides a great case of study as many investigations have been carried out. After the gradiometer survey performed in 2013 a sediment core survey was designed. 132 cores were drilled using a hand-held coring machine and the sediments were analysed in situ. Site delimitation and archaeological interpretations based on magnetic data could be improved or corrected. In this regard, the core survey proved to be an useful methodology as many anomalies could be checked within reasonable time and resources. However, further geophysical investigations trough GPR revealed unexpected remains in areas where no archaeological deposits were identified through coring. Excavations showed poor conservation level in some of those areas, leading to thin archaeological deposits hard to identify at the cores. The sediment core survey, therefore, was proved to be inconclusive to delimit the archaeological site.

This paper presents the results of a multisystem survey using magnetometry and dual frequency ground-penetrating radar (GPR) carried out at the Iron Age Iberian site of El Moli d'Espigol, Tornabous, Catalonia, dated from the seventh to third centuries bce. The surroundings of the current urban area were explored with magnetometry in order to describe possible features related to the settlement. In the non-excavated part of the urban area was surveyed by GPR in order to describe the urban mesh. The interpretation of the data has allowed not only the identification of new areas of archaeological interest and priority action, but also the proposal of a new hypotheses on the evolution of the town planning and the defensive system of the site. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

High-resolution methods are required in the non-destructive study of historical buildings, archaeological sites and cultural heritage structures in general. Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) is widely used in such studies. However, radar images of archaeological sites and cultural heritage architecture tend to be unclear and are difficult to interpret. Knowledge of the antenna’s behaviour and the optimum expected resolution could help to interpret radar data and define a limit of the real resolution in field surveys. Laboratory tests could provide information about the optimum resolution for each specific antenna. The main goal of this study was to obtain experimental data under lab conditions and thus define the optimum resolution expected in radar surveys. This could then be considered as a limit in field surveys. All of the lab tests were performed using homogeneous media (water and sand) to avoid interference and clutter. As a result, simple images were obtained. The optimum resolution was defined from radar data acquired under these favourable, controlled conditions. In all cases, resolution was defined as the distance (considered as a function of wavelength) between two targets (in the vertical or horizontal axis) that were needed to obtain separate anomalies. All the optimum values were considered to define the limits of the survey resolution in the different cases presented in this paper. In each case, the optimum values were compared with the result and with the radar images to define the best approach to the expected resolution in architectural heritage surveys. To conclude, we define some experimental values of the optimum resolution, described in terms of wavelength. These experimental data are likely to provide a better approach than theoretical estimations.

Introduction The paper presents the results of the use of alternative geostatistical and statistical methods to enhance visualization of the Tarragona Cathedral. These methods improve data homogeneity with time/depth, give alternative time-slice computation using other values than the mean value, and study the impact of the time-window thickness used when generating time-slices. The data used for the project was a GPR prospection of the cathedral accomplished in 2007 by Roger Sala and Ekhine ...

Introduction A 3D GPR investigation, combined with fluxgate magnetometer, has been carried out on a hill fort called Castro de la Magdalena in León (Northwest of Spain). The archaeological investigation started after remains of Celtiberian culture (dated from the first Iron Age) and a later Roman occupation were discovered in a town nearby. Figure 1: A shows the results of shallow excavations (15-30 cm) over the Roman settlement. B shows location of Roman villa and castro areas. C shows a sil...

An integrated geophysical survey has been conducted at the Tarragona’s Cathedral (Catalonia, NE Spain) with the aim to detect the existence of archaeological remains of the Roman’s temple devoted to August. Many hypotheses have been proposed about its possible location, the last ones regarding the inner part of the Cathedral, which is one of the most famous temple of Spain (12th century) evolving from Romanesque to Gothic styles. A project including electrical resistivity tomography (ERT), ground probing radar (GPR) and frequency domain electromagnetics (FDEM) has been planned over one year and conducted during a week of intensive field survey. From all the methods applied, both ERT and GPR have provided some detailed information on subsoil structures. The ERT method has been applied with different techniques and arrays, ranging from standard Wenner-Schlumberger 2D sections to full 3D electrical imaging using the MYG array. Electrical resistivity data have been recorded extensively and therefore, 70.000 apparent resistivity data were available to obtain a full 3D image after an integrated inversion. In conclusion, some significant buried structures have been revealed providing conclusive information for archaeologists.

An integrated geophysical survey was conducted in September 2007 at the Cathedral of Tarragona to search for archaeological remains of the Roman temple dedicated to the Emperor Augustus. Many hypotheses about its location have been put forward, the most recent ones suggesting it could be inside the present cathedral. A project including Electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) and Ground probing radar (GPR) was planned for a year and conducted during a week of intensive field survey. Both ERT and GPR provided detailed information about subsoil structures. Different ERT techniques and arrays were used, ranging from standard Wenner-Schlumberger 2D sections to full 3D electrical imaging using the MYG array. Electrical resistivity data were recorded extensively, making available many thousands of apparent resistivity points to obtain a complete 3D image after full inversion. The geophysical results were clear enough to persuade the archaeologists to excavate the area. The excavation confirmed the geophysical interpretation. In conclusion, the significant buried structures revealed by geophysical methods under the cathedral were confirmed by recent archaeological digging as the basement of the impressive Roman Temple that headed the Provincial Forum of Tarraco, seat of the Concilium of Hispania Citerior Province.