Quarantine: can lessons from the past help improve disease response?

COVID-19 continues to be a public health crisis, while severely impacting global financial markets causing significant economic and social hardship. As with any emerging disease, pharmaceutical interventions required time, emphasizing the initial and continuing need for non-pharmaceutical interventions. We highlight the role of anthropological and historical perspectives to inform approaches to non-pharmaceutical interventions for future preparedness

Dalla civitas al comitatus. Artigiani nel vicariato di Galliera nel tardo Trecento

By examining the records of the Galliera area, it has been possible to identify and follow different figures of artisans: from tailors to blacksmiths, from shoemakers to "beccari", from "pellicciai" to "strazzaroli". The casuistry is varied and overall records a certain quantitative consistency. The reporting of the work activity carried out by the protagonists of the individual cases is frequent, but not systematic. Although the sampling is limited, it was intended to give a picture of the potential offered by vicar registers in reflecting the daily life of rural communities, from which numerous artisans emerge

Integrated Remote Sensing to Assess Disease Control: Evidence from Flat Island Quarantine Station, Mauritius

This article presents an integrated approach used in archaeology and heritage studies to examine health and disease management during the colonial period in the Indian Ocean. Long-distance labor migrations had dire health consequences to both immigrants and host populations. Focusing on the quarantine station on Flat Island, Mauritius, this study analyzes a historical social setting and natural environment that were radically altered due to the implementation of health management. Using aerial and satellite imagery, digital elevation models, RTK and total station raw data, 3D modeling, and GIS mapping, we reconstructed the spatial organization and the built landscape of this institution to assess the gap between the benefits claimed by European colonizers and the actual effects on immigrant health conditions through the promotion of public health practice

New lagoon communities between the Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Jesolo and Cittanova

The lagoon of the northern Adriatic represents an interesting space where we can study the birth and evolution of settlements between the Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. The paper wants to highlight these processes, analyzing the first results of an archaeological project led by the University Ca' Foscari of Venice in two sites: Jesolo, a proper lagoon community during the Middle Ages, and Cittanova, properly a river community, strictly connected to Jesolo and the Venetian lagoon

Integrated remote sensing to assess disease control: evidence from Flat Island quarantine station, Mauritius

This article presents an integrated approach used in archaeology and heritage studies to examine health and disease management during the colonial period in the Indian Ocean. Longdistance labor migrations had dire health consequences to both immigrants and host populations. Focusing on the quarantine station on Flat Island, Mauritius, this study analyzes a historical social setting and natural environment that were radically altered due to the implementation of health management. Using aerial and satellite imagery, digital elevation models, RTK and total station raw data, 3D modeling, and GIS mapping, we reconstructed the spatial organization and the built landscape of this institution to assess the gap between the benefits claimed by European colonizers and the actual effects on immigrant health conditions through the promotion of public health practices

Importare, produrre e consumare nella laguna di Venezia dal IV al XII secolo: anfore, vetri e ceramiche

The objective of this study is to deal with the long-term characters and consumption patterns in the Venetian lagoon in the period ranging from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages on the basis of existing archaeological documentation. The most archaeologically visible materials and, namely, pottery, amphorae and glass were materials taken into consideration. As a consequence of this analysis, three principal periods have been identified. A first phase, in Late Antiquity, documents a reasonably widespread circulation of imported Mediterranean ceramics (African and Eastern) and amphorae originating from the same areas. Along with a significant number of imports from distant places, this period also saw imports such as coarse pottery, single-fired glazed pottery and glass from neighbouring areas. This data seems to indicate a certain vitality in the lagoon in this period, which could be related to it being central to the traffic of the new political orders in the North Adriatic. Moreover, the following period, from the 8th to the 10th Century, coincided with a period of the stabilization and of institutional consolidation of a number of lagoon settlements as in Torcello and the same Olivolo/Rialto. It also marked a total decline in imports of both wide and medium range along with a significant reduction in the use of coarse cooking pottery and glass kitchenware. The sole exception is represented by single-fired glazed pottery produced in the North Adriatic which during the 9th and 11th Centuries was widespread in the lagoon. It is probable that this situation is a snapshot of a change that occurred in the behaviour of the lagoon communities and underscores close links to the Po valley and continental worlds rather than a loosening of economic and commercial ties, indirectly confirmed by written sources and by findings of moneys and amphorae. Therefore, it could also have been a symptom of cultural distance with reference models of the Byzantine area. At the same time, it was in this period that the production of glass was consolidated as represented by the Torcello context, if this can be dated from the 9th Century and not from the 7th as originally proposed. A change in this field was only registered after the year 1000 A.D. even if there were only few Mediterranean imports during the 11th Century consisting, currently, in a Constantinople ‘Glazed White Ware’ from the Monastery of Saints Hillary and Benedict in Gambarare (Mira) and a few fragments of Egyptian ‘Fayyumi Ware’ from Jesolo. Despite long commercial relations between Venice and Byzantium, on the one hand, and Islam (in particular Egypt) on the other, no changes in the lagoon elite, especially with reference to ceramics and as seen from the materials, occurred until well into the 12th Century. Rather than marking the existence or consolidation of these ties in this period, Byzantine sgraffito and Islamic fritware imports indicate how the Venetian elite started to slowly adapt to tastes that had long since been prevalent in contemporary Mediterranean societies

Archeologia nel territorio nonantolano: fondamenti di studio

Nonantola has been the object of attention of local scholars and authoritative humanists since the 16th century, as the seat of the famous Benedictine abbey of S. Silvestro. In order to gain a deeper understanding of the value of the research carried out in the past, it is useful to reflect on the quantitative and qualitative elements, particularly with regard to the way in which archaeological data was acquired, which can be succinctly verified by the graphs drawn up and deduced from the archaeological maps compiled for the two municipalities. Characterizations of the rural settlement on the basis of the known, distinguished by broad chronological phases and described through the compiled site cards are presented

Le indagini archeologiche 2006-2011

The archaeological investigation conducted at the site of Cuol di Ciastiel allowed the exploration of late antique castrum, an exceptional fort in the upper Tagliamento valley (Forni di Sopra, Udine). The whole area of the fortified site was excavated between 2006 and 2011. The castrum consisted of an elliptical stone wall with two quadrangular towers and a fortified entry. Even though the structures were badly preserved, the stratigraphic sequence and the associated finds offer a representative picture of a late antique site that was used for a short time between the 4th and the 5th centuries. The destruction of the castrum was caused by a fire during the 5th century, when the site was permanently abandoned

Le UTS 16, 23 e 25

The stratigraphic data from three of the excavation sectors investigated between 2004 and 2009 in the abbey garden of the monastery of St. Sylvester in Nonantola are presented analytically. The particularly rich and complex archaeological deposit provides a great deal of information on the organization of spaces, functions, and material culture that characterized this foundational site for the Italian and European Middle Ages

Il tessuto insediativo nel medioevo: dalle fonti scritte alle fonti materiali. Archeologia del paesaggio e analisi geomorfologica del territorio di Galliera

The article presents a preliminary summary of the historical and archaeological sources relating to the territory of Galliera, an area of the lower Bolognese plain that experienced ups and downs during the Middle Ages due to its bordering position with respect to the Ferrarese and Modenese regions