Application of travel-time seismic tomography for archaeological studies of building foundations and basements

Travel-time seismic tomography with adaptive environment parameterization successfully revealed the detailed structure of the St. Onuphrius Church basement and underlying geological layers on Big Solovetsky Island. The study demonstrated that this method can recover architectural and archaeological features inaccessible to other geophysical techniques. Synthetic experiments confirmed the accuracy of the recovered 3D velocity pattern, aligning with historical and archaeological data. This approach offers a powerful tool for non-invasive investigation of buried structures in culturally significant environments.

Fokin, I. V., Basakina, I. M., Kapustyan, N. K., Tikhotskii, S. A., & Schur, D. Yu. (2012). Application of travel-time seismic tomography for archaeological studies of building foundations and basements. Seismic Instruments, 48(2), 185–195. https://doi.org/10.3103/s074792391202003x