Articles by Andrea Garzulino

Introduction to the Conference Milano internazionale: la fragilità territoriale dei contesti archeologici

Tarquinia is a site of high relevance for the themes of this conference, from fragility to internationalisation, which can be explored on evidence gathered through uninterrupted and systematic presence of researchers from the University of Milan, since 1982. The site has attracted interdisciplinary initiatives and scholars from Universities and research institutes throughout Europe and the world. Today the ancient Etruscan city, buffer zone of the UNESCO site (2004), i.e. the necropolis of painted tombs, is threatened by various geomorphological phenomena and by the risk of abandonment of active research, hindered by current legal-administrative conditions. However, the continuity can counteract this two-faced fragility. This research is based on an established tradition and it is constantly renewed, with obvious advantages for the UNESCO site, which is always under the spotlight. The Tarquinian territory is one of the fields in which the interdisciplinary collaboration immediately yields high returns, especially focusing on a complete and defined survey, through the recent acquirements of topographic research (LiDAR, GIS, geophysical prospections) combined with archaeological investigation. This includes a thorough study of how the ancient city is integrated in the current town plan and in urban planning for the territory: the rules of archaeological, environmental and landscape safeguards the UNESCO Buffer zone vary considerably for specific land plots. However, if on the one hand it is right to think in terms of agricultural development and productivity, this must be done in a way that is respectful of the Etruscan metropolis, whose immense buried archaeological potential is as yet little known.

The Centro di Ricerca Coordinata ‘ProgettoTarquinia’ of the Università degli Studi di Milano is a LERU (League of European Research Universities) exemplary interdisciplinary research project that involves groups from the Università Statale di Milano (Archaeology, Information and Communication Technologies, Geoarchaeology, Palaeoanthropology), the Politecnico di Milano (Architecture and Topography) and bridges the gap between soft and hard sciences. This project stems from the ‘Progetto Tarquinia’ conceived by Maria Bonghi Jovino in 1982. During the last ten years, our integrated system of tools and services, supported by ICTs (ArchMatrix), through which multidisciplinary domain experts can examine all the typologies of data of a given culture, has made it possible to concentrate on the links between data-sources focusing on the recurrence of association rates within different aspects of material evidence and phenomena. The fields of application of our methodology in the domain of archaeology and epigraphy are multifaceted as regards the inside and outside connections of the Tarquinian heritage, whose necropolis with the famous painted tombs is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Research includes areas of the Civita plateau: the ‘monumental complex’, the Ara della Regina sanctuary, fortifications, and archaeological sites previously explored. In the past ten years, research in the necropolis (roughly 6,000 tombs, of which 400 are painted) and in the surrounding territory has also been implemented and has produced the complete corpus of the painted tombs of Tarquinia. Our holistic approach encompasses archaeological analysis of small (mobile finds), medium (archaeological contexts) and large scale (territory and landscape) architectural analysis and applications for integrated solutions for the cultural heritage, including the first bilingual Virtual Museum dedicated to an Etruscan city.