New Data from Pleistocene deposit of S. Ciro cave

Abstract

Quaternary fossil sites in Sicily have been known for a long time and all of them have a common story of human predation and manipulation. Hence, we illustrate the first electrical tomography applied to the study of a fossiliferous deposit in a cave in Sicily. The site investigated is the deposit inside the cave of San Ciro-Maredolce, near Palermo. This study aims to answer the following questions: is the geoelectric survey applicable to quaternary deposit of caves? is the deposit still existing or has been completely emptied? Here we show a ERT model (Electrical Resistivy Tomography) of deposit and possible anthropogenic interactions (presence of historic and\or illegal excavations) with the deposit. Therefore, use of this technique allows to obtain information to geometry of deposit and the presence of historical and abusive excavations. In San Ciro cave, residual deposit that appears to be altered in several places. However the absence of high resistivity values in the central part of the cave indicates that the maximum depth of the deposit has not yet been reached. In addition, we found many low resistivity anomalies as a consequence of the high interaction between cave and human activities. However, we found a very interesting anomaly for its geometric conformation within residual deposit. To sum up, electrical tomography is a new technique applicable to study of the Sicilian Quaternary deposits because we obtain information to geometry, thickness and the presence of irregular anomalies on fossiliferous deposits.