Integrated geoelectrical investigations on the east hill in the Selinunte Archaeological Park

A geoelectrical study was carried out in the Selinunte area within the framework of a geophysical survey intended to test the feasibility of an archaeological program. This pilot program involves several Italian research groups. The survey was conceived to obtain high detail and reliability in the results for a small area in which previous geomagnetic investigations have shown some anomalies. In that area, measuring 11m x 11m, a square grid of 144 copper electrodes was used to obtain 1548 apparent resistivity measurements, using the tripotential method, dipole- dipole profiling, and rectangle configurations. The results were used to construct a set of maps and pseudo-sections. The various sets of data were compared and also used in a variety of different combinations to test both their resolving power and reliability. On the whole, it seems that this kind of geophysical approach could give appreciable results in surveying archaeological sites. In fact, an only slightly greater effort in field operations significantly increases the amount of experimental data, giving much more reliable information, which can be interpreted using integrated inversion methods. Nevertheless, without any specific target to the research, it is difficult to relate the anomalies detected in the area with geological or archaeological sources.