International Conference on GPR in Archaeology (Nara, February 2001)

GPR Prospection in the "Oberstadt" of Ephesos (Turkey).

Sirri S. Seren, Alois Eder-Hinterleitner, Peter Melichar

Wolfgang Neubauer

Ephesos was one of the most important commercial centre in the Mediterranean area in Hellenistic and Roman time and is nowadays one of the most impressive and famos archaeological site world-wide. Although Austria is doing archaeological research in Ephesos since more than 100 years, most of the suspected archaeological area is still waiting to be examined. Geophysical prospection can give the chance to collect archaeological information within reasonable time from the whole archaeological area to complete the city map of Ephesos.

As a preliminary study to test the suitability of GPR for the area of the "Oberstadt" of Ephesos different GPR surveys were carried out in September 2000. We used a PulseEKKO 1000 system with 225 MHz, 450 MHz and 900 MHz antennas, which was specially adapted by Archeo Prospections for rapid prospection of large areas. To investigate the influence of the mean frequency of the antenna GPR prospections with all 3 antennas on the same area of 5.300 m2 were carried out (grid: 0.5 m x 0.05 m). The self developed software applied for data processing is designed to end up with visualisations of depth slices of the distribution of the amplitudes in a geographic information system (GIS) within minutes after finishing the survey.

The results of preliminary study shows that GPR is very well suitable for prospecting the city map of Ephesos. Three Roman insulae, their structure of cultivation and the street system can be seen very clearly in the test-area. The tests for the selection of the antenna frequency shows the expected result. High frequency antennas delivers more clear and detailed results with the disadvantage of less depth penetration.

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