Archaeology

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by permission of the instructor. By the end of the course, students know the main epigraphic disciplines from a comparative, diachronic, and diatopic perspective. They are able to analyze the writer’s intention implicit in every written document in relation to the support and the type of archaeological context. Students will know how to use the main methods of documentation and study of inscriptions, including new developments in digital epigraphy. They will have a critical understanding of a written document qua archaeological find, thus enhancing its purely material side. They will also make independent use of the main corpora and repertoires (even digital ones), as provided by the epigraphic disciplines.

The course focuses on the materiality of ancient Near Eastern written evidence. Starting from the emergence of the first written documents toward the end of the fourth millennium BC, the use of the cuneiform script, which was first invented to express Sumerian and was later adapted to write a variety of unrelated languages throughout the ancient Near East, is analyzed. Specifically, different material supports and the social, religious, archival, and archaeological contexts of writing are examined. Particular attention is devoted to the relation between writing and royal ideology, and to scribal training and education.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. By the end of the course, students acquire an updated knowledge about the main phenomena characterising the archaeology of settlements and environment of the Middle Ages. They will be familiar with the main methodological approaches of contemporary research, as well as be able to assess the reliability of the data presented and to highlight their limits. The students acquire a general knowledge about the main aspects of the settlement patterns evolution and the transformations of the environment during the Middle Ages in several geographic contexts. By knowing the different methodological approaches adopted by the contemporary research, the students gain the skills that they need to plan by themselves further studies or fieldwork itself, starting with the best methodological approach and the right research questions.

The course presents a series of research topics and processes through which the history and archaeology of Italian medieval landscapes are explored and compared with those of other areas in medieval Europe and the Mediterranean. To address this subject effectively, the course also delves into key methods and strategies in the archaeology and history of landscapes. The topics covered include: Archaeology, history, and medieval landscapes: methods and strategies; Fortifications and castles; Villages and other rural settlements; Uncultivated and agrarian landscapes; Urban landscapes; New towns and secondary settlements; Churches, monastic landscapes, and deserta; Archaeology of rural lords and peasant communities; The end of the Roman period; Italy: comparative landscapes of the north, center, and south; Italy in comparison with the eastern and western Mediterranean and northern and southern Europe.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by permission of the instructor. At the end of the course unit students have the tools for an integrated approach to the study of the archaeological sites around Vesuvius, attentive to their specific nature of historic sites, which have their status as the best sample of classical archeology, not because of their real excellence in the ancient world, but because of the fate and their exceptional material preservation. Students demonstrate critical consciousness about the “vulgata” and develop a self-sufficient ability to review their “topoi”, enabling them to read the Vesuvian archaeological sites back to their actual nature as privileged case-study, but not as a benchmark of universal value. At the end of the course students are able to orientate themselves in the rich scientific literature, to identify potential research topics, to independently design a circumscribed research project, and to elaborate the results in an original form, both oral and written.

The course explores the Vesuvian area, well known but still poorly investigated and studied. After an introduction about the status quaestionis, the course follows the analysis of some specific cases study, both investigated by other research institutions and equips, and in regard to the projects (Pompeii, Herculaneum, Torre del Greco) of the Vesuviana program lead by the University of Bologna.