Detection of near-surface heterogeneities at archaeological sites using seismic diffractions

Abstract The detection of shallow buried ancient structures or objects of cultural heritage is a primary challenge for seismic surveys at archaeological sites. The knowledge of the distribution of shallow objects can assist archaeologists’ study of the past without making excavations. Excavations lead to surface exposure of the buried objects and potential damages and preservation issues. The seismic response arising from localized archaeological targets is encoded in diffractions, which can be used to locate the objects. However, the energy of a diffracted wave is usually weak and masked behind the strong presence of other coherent signals or coherent noise in the data (e.g., surface waves, specular reflections). This makes it difficult to detect and interpret reliably.