Articles by Margherita Azzari

The city of Rusellae and its surrounding landscape have undergone varying degrees of transformation over the centuries. These changes are most pronounced in the coastal areas, while the inland region, where the ancient settlement once stood, has seen more limited alterations. This study examines the evolving relationship between the city and its territory through an integrated approach that combines historical and contemporary aerial photographs with a critical analysis of cartographic materials spanning from the 15th to the 19th century. The goal is to provide a diachronic reconstruction of the landscape, emphasizing both continuities and disruptions in terracing systems, road networks, and toponymy. A key aspect of this research involves the use of RT3D, an open-source software developed by the LabGeo at the SAGAS Department of the University of Florence. This tool allows for the archiving, standardization, and integration of geo-spatial data from diverse sources, including core samples, surveys, excavations, and archival research. The result is a three-dimensional visualization of stratigraphy that enhances the interpretation of archaeological contexts, offering new insights for historical and archaeological investigations. The integrated analysis enabled the identification and reinterpretation of ancient road networks, terracing systems, and potential settlement areas no longer detectable at the surface, thereby enhancing the reconstruction of the urban layout and territorial organization of Rusellae through its Etruscan and Roman phases.

The contribution draws on the experience gained within the Rome Transformed project on the Eastern Caelian hill, reserving a with more general attention to problems of method. The spatial dimensions of the project pose problems including – but at the same time going beyond – those normally addressed for the visualization of individual surveyed structures. Two points seem crucial: 1) the transparency of metadata and paradata; 2) the tension between too much or too little prescriptive models or ontologies. Visualizing a territory poses peculiar problems; we have several examples in the past, but normally the reconstruction of ancient orography on which to place surveyed structures is not explicitly thematized. The territory imposes a leap in scale in the size and management of the data; forms the palimpsest on which to arrange the views of the individual sectors or structures into which it is divided; defines the ‘conditions of existence’ of topographical and monumental articulation; must consider the effects that older phases impose on later ones. Visualization of a territory is not only a way to present to the scientific community and the wider public in a concise manner the results achieved. Such an approach poses the need to work in an environment in which it is possible to progressively incorporate evidence of a very heterogeneous nature such as archival data, geognostic surveys of different types, surveys using traditional techniques or 3D scanning, and core drilling. The organisation of such heterogeneous data within a single software becomes essential for their subsequent processing. It was therefore necessary to design an application able to manage in a single three-dimensional environment the data produced while maintaining the associated information (metadata and paradigms) in order to allow them to be compared and at the same time guaranteeing full interoperability with the GIS environments in which the modelling activity is carried out.