Carlo Promis e l'antica Torino

A metà dell'Ottocento, l'antica Torino rivive grazie all'opera di un architetto e archeologo, nonché docente di quello che diventerà il Politecnico di Torino, Carlo Promi

Roman Centuriation in Satellite Images

The satellite images of Google Earth can show us how the Roman divided the land in their colonies, according to the surveying system of Centuriation

I Campi Macri. Un mercato panitalico sulla via della lana

Many ancient sources mention the ovine market in Campi Macri as one of the most important of the Republican period throughout the Italic territory. The place can be identified near Magreta, a few kilometers south of the Via Aemilia and the Roman colony of Mutina, in a district famous for the quality of wool that was produced. The archaeological evidence suggests that the market has arisen under the rule of the Gauls, probably at a place of worship, and that the Romans had preserved it even after the conquest of the region. In fact, they took the place of indigenous economic structure without changing it substantially and preserving the public relevance, so taking advantage of the traditional trade and transhumance routes that through the Apennines and the Po valley connected upper Tyrrhenian to Venetia. Between II and I century BC livestock and wool trade, however, was enhanced by the sale of other crafts: first eastern pottery and then Hellenistic lamps manufactured on site. Among the Roman remains discovered in Magreta, as well as support structures and craft workshops, there is evidence of a place of worship. Connected to the fair was an important late Republican sanctuary discovered in Cittanova, near Via Aemilia, furthermore next to a factory of Hellenistic lamps. This organization of archaic type, characterized by the participation of local people and the complete autonomy of Campi Macri with respect to the nearby colony of Mutina, fell at the beginning of the Augustan period, when the economic and settlement rearrangement of the region overruled the requirements of the old market, bringing it quickly to the complete abandonment

Methodological insights into the study of centuriated field systems: a landscape archaeology perspective

The morphological identification of centuriated field systems has been characterised from its beginnings by methodological approaches mainly sustained on actus-based modular relationships and orientations. Many researchers dedicated to the identification of centuriations have only performed archaemorphological analyses based on interpretation of aerial photographs and maps without field verification or any other proof of the validity of their hypothsis. Their restitutions consisted of a set of lines over a map or an aerial photograph which often lacked precision and spatial resolution. This article argues that the study of centuriations should transform its aims, scope and methodologies to be converged with those presented by diachronic transdisciplinary landscape archaeology. In order to do so a series of integrated methodological approaches are exposed and their applicability discussed

Archeologia della lana in età romana. Dati preliminari dalla provincia di Rovigo

This paper presents the preliminary results of the census of archeological data for the province of Rovigo related to the textile industry in roman times. This research comes from a Phd project that is still ongoing and is a part of a larger research focused on the Roman textiles in Northern Italy started a few years ago by the Dipartimento dei Beni Culturali, University of Padua. Whilst weaving and spinning activities are quite frequent, evidence for shearing is quite rare. The paper also divides the specific characteristics of each class of objects studied in two separate geographic contexts, the urban context of the city of Adria and the rural context of the rest of the Rovigo province