Unveiling Damnatio Memoriae. The use of 3D digital technologies for the virtual reconstruction of archaeological finds and artefacts

[EN] In ancient Rome, damnatio memoriae was a practice of erasing the memory of condemned persons from historical records after their death. This practice was usually addressed by the Senate to Roman elites and emperors who were declared enemies of the State, in order to preserve the honour of Rome. This condemnation usually included practices such as, for example, the erasure of names sculpted on inscriptions and the destruction or reworking of statues and of any other image of the person. Emperor Nero, for example, was condemned to this practice immediately after his death and a wide iconographic repertoire on him was therefore destroyed or deeply damaged. This lack of information can actually be improved thanks to the possibilities of virtual restoration and reconstruction offered by 3D digital technologies.The aim of this paper is to show how the possibility to acquire 3D reality-based data from archaeological finds allows to build 3D digital models that can be analysed and managed in a virtual environment and can be relocated, assembled or restored in order to suggest or graphically support archaeologists’ interpretations and reconstructions. The paper shows the methodology developed for the virtual restoration of the statue of Nero starting from the 3D digitization of the torso that was found 500 years ago by the Roman theatre of Bologna, Italy, the ancient Bononia.Manferdini, AM.; Gasperoni, S.; Guidi, F.; Marchesi, M. (2016). Unveiling Damnatio Memoriae. The use of 3D digital technologies for the virtual reconstruction of archaeological finds and artefacts. Virtual Archaeology Review. 7(15):9-17. doi:10.4995/var.2016.5871.SWORD91771

Medieval universities, legal institutions, and the commercial revolution

We present new data documenting medieval Europe’s Commercial Revolution using information on the establishment of markets in Germany. We use these data to test whether medieval universities played a causal role in expanding economic activity, examining the foundation of Germany’s first universities after 1386 following the papal schism. We find that the trend rate of market establishment breaks upward in 1386 and this break is greatest where the distance to a university shrank most. There is no differential pre-1386 trend associated with the reduction in distance to a university, and there is no break in trend in 1386 where university proximity did not change. These results are robust to estimating a variety of specifications that address concerns about the endogeneity of university location. Universities provided training in newly rediscovered Roman and canon law; students with legal training served in positions that reduced the uncertainty of trade in the Middle Ages. We argue that training in the law, and the consequent development of legal and administrative institutions, was an important channel linking universities and greater economic activity in medieval Germany

Relazione di Germania e della corte di Rodolfo II. imperatore negli anni 1605 - 1607

fatta da Roderico Alidosi, ambasciatore del granduca di Toscana Ferdinando I.(VLID)132968

Li dottori forestieri che in Bologna hanno letto teologia, filosofia, medicina & arti liberali : con li rettori dello studio da gli anni 1000, sino per tuttio maggio del 1623 ([Reprod.]) / di Gio. Nicolo Pasquali Alidosi,...

Collection : Italian books 1601-1700 ; 5.