Characterization of archaeological structures using the magnetic method: a case study in Thaj, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. - HAL Accéder directement au contenu
Poster de conférence Année : 2018

Characterization of archaeological structures using the magnetic method: a case study in Thaj, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Résumé

In recent years, magnetic surveying has proven its efficiency to discover and characterize archaeological structures across large areas. Doing so, archeologists can have a global understanding on the general settlements of the studied site and decide their excavations with more efficiency. Since several years, the laboratory practices such king of magnetic cartography using three-component fluxgate magnetometers and got many results even for low magnetization contrasts corresponding to magnetic anomalies of only a few nannoteslas. The homemade system is based on light and low consuming magnetic sensors with their electronic device and associated with a DGNSS navigation allowing very precise positioning. The computed magnetic maps have an accuracy of about 1 nT. Located in the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia, 90 km west of the Gulf Coast and the modern port of Jubayl, Thaj is the largest pre-Islamic site known in Eastern Arabia. It is composed of a fortified city of 40 ha, surrounded by a massive fortification wall of trapezoidal shape; an extramural suburb covering ca 14 ha and a huge necropolis of about 500 burial mounds extending in to the West, South and East of the city. The data were collected in November 2016 and November 2017, a total of 37 ha have been mapped during these two surveys, each representing 10 days of work. All the data has been processed to obtain magnetic maps with 0,25 m node spacing and an accuracy of about 1 nT. Potential field transforms (reduction to the pole, derivatives, analytic signal, tilt-depth) are then applied to the map to better highlight the archeological structures producing the magnetic anomalies and, in particular, to characterize their depths. Thanks to those transforms, magnetic lineations are better characterized and generally, they are related to ancient streets. The interpretation has been checked using airborne imagery with good results and, at many places, magnetic lineations are used to extend the urban plan.
Loading...
Fichier non déposé

Dates et versions

halshs-03944099, version 1 (17-01-2023)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : halshs-03944099 , version 1

Citer

Paul Calou, R. Alkhatib-Alkontar, Marc Munschy, Jérôme Rohmer. Characterization of archaeological structures using the magnetic method: a case study in Thaj, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.. American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2018, Dec 2018, Washinghton DC, United States. ⟨halshs-03944099⟩
15 Consultations
0 Téléchargements
Dernière date de mise à jour le 07/04/2024
comment ces indicateurs sont-ils produits

Partager

Gmail Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Plus