Articles by Raffaella Pierobon Benoit

In the last few decades, urban archaeology in Naples has contributed to outline the history of the city. The discovery of a great amount of pottery gave information about the daily life of ancient Naples. It was therefore decided to draw up a thematic archaeological map of the ceramics finds to reconstruct their production and distribution from the 4th century B.C. to the 7th century A.D. The project ceraNEApolis consists of a pottery map linked to a bibliographic database, which will be made available online: a working tool for experts, useful to outline the cultural city stratification and to understand the Neapolitan archaeological sites through the material. It is useful in defining the topography of production (workshop, raw materials, and resources), distribution (communication routes, harbour, market), uses and consumption patterns (house, habitat, sacred areas, burials) in the city, even if lacking monumental evidence. It contributes to the reconstruction and analysis of the cultural and urban landscape, taking into account the geomorphological elements and the data contexts even in diachronic and transversal multi-disciplinary perspective. The analysis of some significant cases shows its validity also for potential alternative fruition. The integration of virtual reality systems is a possible extension also for the knowledge, enhancement, communication and use of cultural heritage.

This report describes the observations made while developing a new methodology for historic surveys used for the re-contextualisation of archaeological finds. This particular methodology avails itself of both traditional historic surveys as well as the representation of knowledge through ontology. The methodology described here was developed in reference to specific cases of re-contextualisation of archaeological artefacts from Pompeii which are now in the National Archaeological Museum in Naples.