Tracing a major Roman road in the area of ancient Helike by resistivity tomography

In his journey through Achaea in the second century AD, Pausanias mentioned the destroyed Classical site of Helike on the sea and noted that its ruins were still visible underwater near the southwest shore of the Corinthian Gulf. In 2001, the Helike Project excavators discovered on the coastal plain of Helike southeast of Aigion the first ruins of Classical buildings, buried under lagoon sediments 3 m deep. They also found segments of a major Roman road oriented NW–SE and buried 1–1.50 m deep under the contemporary surface. Pausanias referred to the main road through the Helike plain, which he followed during his visit. According to his description, he saw the submerged ruins of Helike toward the sea north of the Roman road. Tracing the exact location of the road would, therefore, help to locate the lost city. We employed resistivity tomography to explore the areas between trenches where the road had been unearthed and also to investigate its possible extension beyond those locations. Since 2004, resistivity studies performed by grids or single profiles have been carried out at 11 locations. As a result, the ancient road was detected for a length of about 2 km. It was also imaged either in two-dimensional or three-dimensional contexts at all the locations where it was detected. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.