Articles by Lorenza Camin

This article describes the results of a project related to IT applied to the city of Lucca in the Roman era (Tecnologie informatiche per la conoscenza e la comunicazione di Lucca romana), which was conducted as part of a Ph.D. program in Technologies and Management of Cultural Heritage at the Institute for Advanced Studies IMT Lucca. The work done can be divided into three separate stages, each of which is distinguished by the utilization of specific surveying tools. The first to be set up was GIS LUCA (Looking at an Urban Context Archive), where all the existing documentation on Roman Lucca was archived (maps, iconography, surveys, images, descriptive data). The information processed in LUCA provided data for the creation of the three-dimensional model of Roman Lucca, whereby the walls, main monuments and arteries, which still identify the town as Roman today, are represented in a schematic yet scientifically correct way. Additional experimentation was conducted as part of the research. Using an innovative three-dimensional relief technique, the ZScan, which enables cloud points to be taken from a photographic scan, three-dimensional models of the pillars of the eastern gate were elaborated, as well as three arches of the Roman amphitheatre that have been particularly well preserved. Lastly, the website www.luccaromana.com was created to publish the results that were obtained. The site proposes numerous knowledge paths around the ancient town by means of a range of highly innovative access methods, that provide a global yet synthetic description of Roman Lucca, which is a result of the research and experimentation conducted as part of the project.

The systematic study of imports from the Orient uncovered in funerary contexts, as part of a research project the purpose of which is the reconstruction of the trade and cultural relations between the Aegean and the oriental basin of the Mediterranean in the Early Iron Age, has been supported by the relational database Ploes carried out in a MsAccess 2000 environment. Ploes represents an example of the possible meeting point between computer science and historical-archaeological research and testifies to the contribution that the computer science technologies can also offer to studies of the traditional school. The digital archives, that have replaced the conventional catalogue, have allowed the management of great amounts of data (1000 imported objects distributed in 300 tomb contexts) in a way that is functional for the purposes of research thanks to the possibility of creating a multiplicity of paths for reading the material. The Ploes database has allowed the storage of data related to individual objects and their discovery contexts in a single archive, thus making it possible to adopt a contextual approach to the analysis of the archaeological documentation. The structure of the digital archives reflects the defined methodological plan at the level of theoretical formulation of the study project: Ploes represents therefore not simply a container of information but an indispensable research instrument.

Between 1999 and 2001, as part of the project Archaeology of Volterra and its territory, excavation took place at a rural site of the Roman period, situated near the old village of Montegemoli (Pomarance, Pisa). For the systematic management of all the mainly paper documentation gathered during the various excavations (US records, records of finds, plans of strata, reliefs and sections, matrix, photographs, IGM cartography), an information system within the scope of GIS technology was planned and set up. The results achieved are presented in this work, with particular reference to the methodology followed. Moreover, attention is drawn to the advantages obtained by using GIS technology, which has enabled complex phenomena and spatial-temporal relations to be represented and analysed at a multiplicity of levels, as well as acting as a support for objective interpretative evaluations.