Articles by Oreste Ferrari

In cataloguing the growth and refinement of cognitive data lead to a limitation of specialized sectors and in general to a weak comprehensive view of cultural phenomena. Moreover, the use of information systems in the Humanities has promoted the "vertical" investigation rather than the "horizontal" one on the poli-disciplinary horizon. The author, as an art-historian, notices in particular the inadequacy of projects devoted to the establishment of integration among various phenomena related to different cultures and periods of time. Some recent works in the historic-artistical sector of studies have turned again to the archaeological world and to its heritage with a deep sensibility of historicization. In this way they are moving towards a more dynamic cultural dialectic. Therefore the author feels that a collaboration between archaeologists and art-historians is necessary in order to translate their own knowledge into repertories (and therefore in safeguarding tools) and then into more complex historical judgements.

The author explains the principles applied by the Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione for the automatic processing of archaeological data in connection with the tasks of protection and preservation of the national cultural heritage. These principles aim at characterizing each archaeological work and at determining the relationships between these and their territorial context in a global historical dimension. Recent research works, and in particular those (generally disappointing) undertaken in the context of the so called “Giacimenti Culturali”, pointed out the necessity of a conceptual, more than technological, coordination. For this reason some fundamental methodological tools were implemented: “Dizionari Terminologici”, “Strutturazioni dei dati” and photographic inventories published by the Institute.