The Terramare and the surrounding hydraulic structures: a geophysical survey of the Santa Rosa site at Poviglio (bronze age, northern Italy)

The Terramara Santa Rosa is a Middle and Late Bronze Age archaeological site located in the Po alluvial plain, northern Italy. It is constituted of two moated villages delimited by earthen ramparts. The peripheral structures of the site are sealed by fine-textured flood plain deposits and they have not been fully explored through excavation due to their large extent. Because the shape of the villages and their relation to moats and the fluvial network are of paramount importance to understanding the landscape management and the use of water resources in the Terramare civilisation, a geophysical survey was planned to extend the results of the existing archaeological excavations to the site scale. A frequency-domain electro-magnetic sounding (FDEM) and electrical resistivity imaging (ERI) covered an area of approximately 26ha; ERI was conducted for a total length >9000m. Despite the predominance of electrically conductive fine-textured sediments, electrical resistivity anomalies were observed and they were attributed to subtle lithological differences in the sedimentary context of the alluvial plain. The geophysical interpretation, after the calibration with the excavation data, revealed the structures of the Terramara and of the surrounding hydraulic network, which are not visible at the surface due to flood plain deposits. The Santa Rosa site was founded in a favourable geomorphological position, on the top of a crevasse splay lobe of the adjoining Po palaeo-channel, rising above the surrounding alluvial plain. The Terramara and their surroundings were delineated through an artificial modification of this pre-existing crevasse splay lobe and a well-targeted urban design, with the objective of diverting water, most likely from a palaeo-channel of the Po River, through the digging of peripheral moats used to collect water around the site and to distribute it to the surrounding fields for irrigation. The water management documented by this study in the Terramara Santa Rosa can be considered as paradigmatic for the whole Terramare civilisation, which is therefore responsible of the introduction of the irrigated agriculture into western Europe for the first time

A dynamical approach to explain ice structures and complex morainic genesis on a partially grounded ice shelf (Hells Gate Ice Shelf, Victoria Land, Antarctica)

info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublishe

A dynamical approach to explain ice structures and complex morainic genesis on a partially grounded ice shelf (Hells Gate Ice Shelf - victorian Land, Antarctica)

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Overview of high resolution seismic prospecting in pre-Alpine and Alpine basins

Several high resolution seismic surveys were conducted in Alpine and pre-Alpine Lombardia (Northern Italy) valleys in order to reconstruct the geometries of the sediments filling the valleys, their seismostratigraphy and the rock basement depth. The acquisitions were made mainly in the framework of the CARG (Geological CARtography) project for the new geological map of Italy and under different research programs between the National Research Council and Regione Lombardia. The research firstly shows the capability of seismic methods in support of Quaternary research, and secondly demonstrates the response of different geomorphological features in particular: glacial valley, terminal moraine, deeply eroded valley and alluvial plain. Different tests were carried out in the seismic surveys in order to optimize the acquisition techniques for shallow prospecting (100-1000 m depth). The data were processed by applying a seismic refraction inversion technique, in addition to standard reflection processing. The integration of the two data sets improves the seismic migration of the reflection sections and the seismic interpretation, producing well-constrained seismo-stratigraphic sections coupled with an accurate seismic velocity section. The quality of the reflected events is generally higher in the glacial domain than in the fluvioglacial eroded valley, probably due to a stronger impedance contrast between soft sediments and hard rock. The terminal moraine sections show an intermediate quality of reflection recor