Past&Present at Tarchna&Tarquinia: a flexible approach to make visible the invisible

This contribution falls within the topic of the “development of guidelines and best practices” and deals with the study case of the ancient Etruscan city of Tarchna (Tarquinia, central Italy). The “Tarquinia Project” started here in 1982 with the investigations carried out by the Università degli Studi di Milano in two sacred areas and along the fortifications. The Project was endowed since its beginnings with the collaboration of several experts in disciplines other than Archaeology which number has increased in the past years. Their aim is to find out as much as possible about the material aspects of Archaeology to decode their relationship with the invisibility of ancient life. This contribution aims at presenting our approach addressed to put scholars in the condition to handle data according to their own procedures, within the same environment, through an ecosystem of benchmarks and references in ways close to the individual practices, supported by ICTs. This is meant to avoid the use of predetermined terminologies and categories, enhancing the proper methods of every single discipline involved in a multidisciplinary environment, beyond the current work of every individual scholar. We propose a radical change of perspective, starting from the collection of raw data in several fields (material aspects of Archaeology, Geoarchaeology, Architecture, Topography) to grasp the underlining model, thanks to the assessment of recurrent associations among different categories of evidence, instead of starting from preconceived theoretic models and using data to confirm them. Distinct small, medium and large scale investigation methods are integrated for the first time to produce a significant interdisciplinary cognitive tool to shift from the materiality of the leftovers of Ancient Past, to its integrity, to what lies behind at a metaphysical level and is, therefore, invisible to us. This is related to the materiality of rituals, based on the recurrence of cultic practices in the above-mentioned sacred areas, whose gestures might also be revealed by sediments and organic remains, in addition to other archaeological and epigraphic issues. Tarquinia strongly challenges researchers to be open to unconventional and unexploited issues due to the complexity of the site. It is the ideal place to create awareness among the general public about the results of Archaeological research and to disseminate and make visible its acquirements, according to the European Charter for Researchers. The support of Environmental Psychologists helps to ensuring outreach entails initiatives directed to the local population, in order to introduce them to an equilibrated connection between their invisible Past and the local present culture. In this framework students from high school are involved in the Archaeological field activities, since 2012. Our best practices are therefore addressed to give back to the ancient Etruscan city its value of prominent cultural and natural landmark in the Past, to make it possible for the modern community to assess it in the same way. According to current theories of “place identity” and "place attachment" the modern community is in the condition to feeling and experiencing the continuity between past, present and future

“Leggere” la cartografia storica: acque e città fortificate dello Stato di Milano dal XVII secolo ad oggi

The paper presents a methodology of analysis and interpretation of cartographic data to understand and reconstruct the historical evolution of some fortified urban systems placed on watercourses (rivers Po, Ticino, Adda and Tanaro) and/or on strategic junctions in Piemonte and Lombardia. The sites, belonging to the State of Milan between the seventeenth and the end of the eighteenth century, are documented in a series of "atlases", cartographic collections and representations that show, at different time, the current state, the transformations and the projects. To these are added, in the following centuries, cadastral maps, cartography of the Military Geographic Institute (IGM), maps and current orthophotos. The border cities of the Duchy of Milan during the spanish domination constitute a field of experimentation for military engineering, both for the precariousness, in many cases, existing defensive works, still late medieval, to be modernized, both to be placed in strategic places on road or lake/river junctions. These cities became the outposts of a redesign and urban experimentation that, even today, characterize their structure even where the walls and castles partly or completely disappeared, as elements of a contradiction in the definition of policies of spaces reuse, compared to current needs. The layered readings with innovative techniques (GIS) of these cartographic materials allow us to reconstruct, through overlaps and comparisons, the transformations of the central area of the cities, directly in contact with the fortified walls and to understand their "permanence degree", not only as a material consistency, but also as a trace, and to understand how much these systems changed over time and influenced or defined the current forma urbis

DALLA CONOSCENZA ALLA CONSERVAZIONE: IL TERRIORIO DELLA CIVITA DI TARQUINIA

Forthcoming