3D electrical resistivity data collected at Arma Veirana cave (Northern Italy)
- 1. Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra e dell'Ambiente, Università di Pavia, Pavia, Italy
- 2. GEA Servizi di Geoarcheologia Srls, Mornico Losana – Pavia, Italy
- 3. Dipartimento di Beni Culturali, Università di Bologna, Ravenna, Italy; Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
- 4. Cultural Heritage Engineering Initiative (CHEI), University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
- 5. School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA; Département d'Anthropologie, Université de Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada
- 6. Department of Anthropology, University of Colorado, Denver, CO, USA
- 7. Institute for Archaeological Sciences and Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany; SFF Centre for Early Sapiens Behaviour (SapienCE), University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
- 8. Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici, Sezione di Scienze Preistoriche e Antropologiche, Università di Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy; Istituto di Geologia Ambientale e Geoingegneria, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Milano, Italy
- 9. Département d'Anthropologie, Université de Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada
- 10. Department of Anthropology, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA; Palaeo-Research Institute, University of Johannesburg, Auckland Park, Gauteng, South Africa
- 11. Dipartimento di Antichità, Filosofia, Storia (DAFIST), Università di Genova, Genova, Italy
Description
This dataset contains the three dimensional (3D) Electrical Resistivity Tomography (ERT) data collected on June 27th 2018 at Arma Veirana cave (Northern Italy) with the main aims to define the features of the deposits, in terms of geometry, thickness, and sediment distribution, and mapped the morphology of the underlying limestone bedrock.
Data were collected with a fully automatic multi-electrode resistivity meter SYSCAL Jr Switch-48 by IRIS Instruments. A surface snake grid comprised of 8 x 6 electrodes spaced ~1.5 m apart both along the X and Y axes was used (Fig. 1). The experimental grid allowed analysis of an area of 10.5 m x 7.5 m with a maximum depth of investigation of approximately 2 m. The presence of blocks, boulders and calcite concretions on the ground (Fig. 2a-c) prevented spacing the electrodes in a perfectly regular grid.
Data were collected using different electrode arrays: 202 dipole-dipole (DD) measures, 96 Wenner (W) measures and 134 Wenner-Schlumberger (WS) measures (432 quadrupole measures for the overall model).
The dataset is presented as a spreadsheet format which has the "space" as separator and the ".txt" extension. The structure of such a file is the following one:
#, El array, Spa1/4, Rho, Dev, M, Sp, Vp, In, Time, Spa5/12, M1/20
- #: Data point number
- El array: Electrode array
- Spa. 1/4: four spacing parameters (corresponding to the electrode array – in m)
- Rho: resistivity value (in Ohm.m)
- Dev: standard deviation (quality factor, in %)
- M: global chargeability value (induced polarization parameter (in mV/V – "=0" if only-resistivity data))
- Sp: spontaneous polarization (measured just before the injection, in mV)
- Vp: measured primary voltage (in mV)
- In: injected current intensity (in mA)
- Time: injection time (pulse duration, in s)
- Spa. 5/8: other spacing parameters (in m)
- Spa. 9/12: electrode elevation (in m)
- M1/M20: partial chargeability values (induced polarization window (in mV/V – "=0" if only-resistivity data))
Electrode coordinates in a local coordinate system are presented as a spreadsheet format which has the "space" as separator and the ".txt" extension. The structure of such a file is the following one:
-Column 1: electrode number
-Column 2: electrode X coordinate
-Column 3: electrode Y coordinate
-Column 4: electrode Z coordinate
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the “Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per la città metropolitana di Genova e le province di Imperia, La Spezia e Savona”, in the persons of the Superintendent Vincenzo Tiné and the official-archaeologist Marta Conventi for allowing us to access and sample the cave and for their support. Archaeological field excavations at Arma Veirana were funded by The Wenner-Gren Foundation, Leakey Foundation, National Geographic Society Waitt Program (W391-15), Hyde Family Foundation [via the Human Origins Migrations and Evolutionary Research (HOMER) consortium], Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Development Grant #430-2018-00846, University of Colorado Denver, Washington University.