Archaeology

This course explores the diverse and changing nature of the discipline of archaeology from the 19th century to the present day. Themes covered include the construction of chronologies, data recovery, classification and interpretation, cultural and processual/post-processual models, and the developing role of archaeological and environmental sciences.

This course focuses on investigating the types of societies that occupied Europe in the Bronze Age and the role they played in shaping an emergent European civilization. A range of themes are addressed including patterns of production, exchange, and interaction, the role of warfare, and the exceptional social and economic developments evident in central Europe, the Aegean, and Iberia. Following these thematic treatments, students investigate more critically the nature of Bronze Age societies in Europe by focusing on how the concept of "chiefdoms" has been developed and used by anthropologists and archaeologists. This involves a close look at some Polynesian chiefdoms that have been used as interpretive models to help understand Bronze Age European societies and then specific European case studies focused on Denmark, Wessex in England, and the Munster region in Ireland.

This course examines topics covering urban settlements, imperial tombs and burials, agriculture, handicrafts, sacrificial rituals and religions, as well as cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries. Taking time as the fundamental axis, the course sorts out the development context of civilization during the Han and Tang dynasties through each thematic topic, comprehensively revealing the cultural features of the Han and Tang dynasties based on archaeological findings. 

This course primarily focuses on the workflow protocols and standards of field archaeology, including archaeological investigation, excavation, artifact processing and analysis, and report compilation. It also covers the archaeological theories, methodologies, and techniques integrated throughout these processes.

The course focuses on the Scandinavian colonial expansion from 1600 to the early 20th century. Based on a number of case studies (e.g. resource colonialism in Sápmi and Greenland, plantations in the Danish West Indies, trade and consumption of colonial products), the course examines colonial discourses and practice and notice relationships between colonialism and resources/environment, economics, power, resistance and science and colonial inheritance. The course also explores the different cultural processes, such as creolisation, othering and ambivalence that takes place in colonial environments and manifests itself in material culture. The course introduces theoretical procedures for historical-archaeological studies of colonialism and presents different sources, methods and perspectives and central research questions.

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 understand the impact of tectonic, geomorphologic, and hydrogeologic hazards (volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides, and floods), biophysical hazards (pandemics and panzootics) and atmospheric and climatological hazards (in particular those related to climate change). They know the interdisciplinary methods of research for the investigation of past disasters and are able to reflect on the limits and advantages of the archaeological approach through the analysis of a diverse set of case studies. They understand the complexity of the economic, technological, and religious responses adopted by the affected societies in the post-disaster phase and become familiar with key-concepts such as risk, disaster, collapse, resilience, and the Anthropocene. They are also able to critically assess the scientific debate developed around those topics by deepening, from an archaeological perspective, methods and themes of cultural and political ecology. They ultimately know the potentials of archaeology in risk reduction, risk prevention, and risk communication in the contemporary world.

The course is divided into two parts: In Part 1, the course discusses the ‘vocabulary’ of disaster studies and disaster archaeology and explores in detail the occurrence of natural hazards such as floods, landslides, earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions. In Part 2, the course adopts a more theoretically informed approach to investigate concepts such as resilience, transformation, cultural change, and collapse.

The course is divided into two sections. The main themes and methodologies of Medieval Archaeology in Italy and Europe are presented during the first section. The lessons therefore address the ways of city dwelling and farming the countryside since the Early Middle Ages to the Modern age (5th-15th c.); Archaeology of craftsman, production and building techniques; the evolution of funerary practices and ritual. The second section focuses on a number of specific insights about the material culture in different European regions. By the end of the course, students have a basic knowledge of archaeology and the history of medieval art from the 5th-6th to roughly the 12th century. From specific cases, they are able to describe the cultural encounters and understand multicultural contexts on the basis of surviving artworks and products of material culture. They learn to listen, understand, and debate respectfully with different viewpoints, and learn to spot tie-ups among different disciplines.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. The course addresses the relationship between archaeology, media, and the public in the complex process of archaeological communication. The first part of the course examines the individual concepts and the evolution of archaeological communication over time, with a specific focus on the last twenty years and the role of digital dissemination. The second part of the course considers the specific case of the KALAM Project, specifically the different ways of communicating to the public the archaeological realities present in the territory of Samarkand, Uzbekistan.

By the end of the course students have an in-depth knowledge of the relationship between archaeological research, cultural heritage, media (meaning both traditional and new digital media), and the public. They will be critically aware of the strategies of communication and dissemination of archaeological knowledge adopted by the various people involved in the job of dissemination and enhancement. The knowledge acquired makes students proficient in assessing, monitoring, and reporting in the media on communication activities relating to archaeology and cultural heritage.

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.