Articles by Riccardo Valente

The boundaries of epigraphy have long remained the subject of implicit assumptions rather than explicit methodological reflection. While the discipline is traditionally associated with the study of inscriptions, the range of objects, media, practices, and analytical approaches encompassed by epigraphic research has expanded considerably over time, raising questions about the field’s conceptual limits and internal coherence. This article investigates how methodological literature has contributed to defining and negotiating the scope of epigraphy. Drawing on citation network analysis, the study examines a corpus of methodological contents that have shaped discussions on the nature, aims, and objects of epigraphic inquiry. By reconstructing patterns of citation and intellectual influence, the article identifies major clusters of scholarship, highlights key reference works, and explores the relationships among different methodological traditions. Rather than treating disciplinary boundaries as fixed or self-evident, the network perspective reveals them as the product of ongoing scholarly interactions and debates. The results suggest that epigraphy is characterized by a plurality of methodological orientations that converge around a shared concern for inscribed texts.

This article provides a preliminary analysis of the administrative metadata of the ARIADNE resources. ARIADNE, an acronym for Advanced Research Infrastructure for Archaeological Dataset Networking in Europe, is a European archaeological infrastructure that supports research. The presented analyses were performed accessing the ARIADNE Knowledge Base via its SPARQL Endpoint. The distribution of available resources per publishers’ country, of archival resources, of combinations of ARIADNE subjects and of combinations of agents (publishers, creators, contributors, owners, scientific responsibles) were estimated and commented, tracing an up-to-date profile of the infrastructure.

This article explores the contributions of the Milan branch of CNR-ISPC to the Humanities and Cultural Heritage Italian Open Science Cloud (H2IOSC) Project, focusing on facilitating data integration within Heritage Science. Its primary objective is to ensure seamless interoperability between resources from multiple institutions by establishing a shared semantic framework. The multidisciplinary nature of Heritage Science underscores the necessity for shared data repositories and effective management tools. Recent literature highlights the importance of semantic technologies in improving data integration and interoperability. To this end, the H-SeTIS database is currently under development. H-SeTIS will function as a hub for the systematic surveying and description of various semantic tools relevant to the Heritage domain. Interestingly, a preliminary analysis of data within H-SeTIS reveals that many semantic resources specifically designed to address the unique requirements of the Heritage domain do not meet the minimum quality requirements of accessibility and reusability. This finding underscores a potential area for future development: the creation of H-SeTIS aims to support the ongoing development of a comprehensive ontology for Cultural Heritage, enhancing data FAIRness and the discipline’s overall impact.

The paper presents the results of a two-year archaeological survey carried out in the Iraqi Kurdistan, namely within the Navkur Plain that has been extensively explored by the University of Udine since 2012. The surveys were planned in advance using Remote Sensing products available online and processed with Google Earth Engine, a large-scale cloud computing service specifically designed to process geospatial big data and especially satellite imagery. Images from Landsat 5, Landsat 7 and Sentinel-2 platforms were selected, processed and assessed. After two years, an overall number of 46 new and previously unknown sites have been localized and surveyed, contributing to the knowledge of the past history of this portion of the Kurdistan region and testing the use of Remote Sensing cloud-computing applications in the context of Near Eastern archaeological research.