2D and 3D data processing of archaeo-magnetic data

Introduction. The Sabine Necropolis at Colle del Forno (700-300 B.C.) at Montelibretti, Rome is characterized by dromos chamber tombs, most of them unexplored till now. The tombs can be assimilated to cavities of a standard volume of some cubic meters; the entrance of the tombs is a corridor 6 m long with a 1 square meter section . The surficial geology of the area consists of a series of tuffs about 10 m thick overlying Pleistocene-Quaternary sandy-clayey sediments. A thin layer of top soil (20 - 30 cm) covers the tuff. The investigation of the Necropolis in the past decade has been performed by different geophysical methodologies: electrical, electromagnetic and magnetic methods have been widely adopted to investigate several chamber tombs (Piro et al, 2001). The aim of this paper is to analyze an integrated approach to the processing of magnetic survey data. The magnetic susceptibility contrast between topsoil, subsoil and rocks (topsoil is normally more magnetic than subsoil) permits to detect ditches, pits and other silted-up features that were excavated and then silted or back-filled with topsoil. Meanwhile back-filled areas produce positive anomalies, less magnetic material introduced into topsoil, including many kinds of masonry (for example, limestone walls) may produce negative anomalies of the order of some nanoteslas. The same behavior is related to the presence of cultural voids and tombs whose magnetic anomaly is generated by the lack of magnetic materials due to the cavities of the tombs. In the area a diffused magnetisation is manly due to the presence of top soil and tuff materials and high negative susceptibility contrasts can be expected because of the presence of the tombs. The magnetic survey was performed along a regular grid of 0.5 m x 0.5 m using a optical pumped Caesium-vapour magnetometer G858 (Geometrics), in the gradient configuration, on an area which is well known as far as the presence, size and position of tombs are concerned.