Application of geoelectrical 3D probability tomography in a test-site of the archaeological park of Pompei (Naples, Italy)

The 3D geoelectric probability tomography method has been previously developed as a powerful approach to localize in the subsoil the sources of the apparent resistivity anomalies detected on the ground surface. We show that this method can be successfully applied in the archaeological park of Pompei to recognize buried remains of the ancient Roman urbanization including roads, squares and buildings which were heavily damaged and totally buried under a thick cover of volcanic fall products resulting from the well-known disastrous 79 AD Vesuvius eruption. A further development is made in this work concerning the identification of source poles and dipoles underground, ascribable to the physical centre of the bodies with anomalous resistivity and to their boundaries, respectively. Different imaging systems are used to enhance the quality of information derived from the tomography analysis.