Articles by Subject

The study of ancient roads has been important in understanding political, social, and cultural transformations of ancient trade networks and economies. In the Near East, landscape-oriented research has immensely contributed to the analysis of pre-modern road systems. However, while for Roman and medieval periods this method produced a dataset that implemented the rich corpus of historical information, research on pre-Roman connectivity networks strongly relies on the archaeological record, mostly represented by data from surveys. The use of these data allows a long term and chronologically unprecise reconstruction of ancient itineraries. Therefore, gaps in the data are often filled by the transposition of later itineraries, risking reiterating the idea that road networks are static, stable over a very long period. This article aims to contextualise connecting networks and route landscapes from the Euphrates river to the Mediterranean sea during the Iron Age (1200-600 BCE). The study will make use of an integrated approach by using multiple datasets. The research will argue that by considering different data, it is possible to offer a critical interpretation of the main route network employed during the Iron Age to connect the Euphrates area with the sea.

This article explores the application of Least-Cost Path Analysis to reconstruct potential transportation routes connecting amphorae production sites on the island of Thasos in northern Aegean. Characterized by wine production as a significant source of wealth during the Classical period, approximately 20 amphorae workshops-identified with surveys- date back to the 4th and 3rd century BC. By utilizing LCP analysis, the study demonstrates the strategic placement of these workshops and reveals their connectivity to the countryside and the port of Thasos. The proximity of the workshops to the main coastal road and maritime routes facilitated the efficient transportation of amphorae to the port. Furthermore, a network of rural pathways played a crucial role in linking the workshops with scattered farmsteads, ensuring a seamless supply chain for ceramic products. This research sheds light on the importance of spatial analysis in retracing ancient communication networks combined with historical and archaeological sources.

This paper explores the initial outcomes of the H2IOSC Project, specifically within Work Package 2 (WP2 - Landscaping & Building Communities), which aims to survey the Italian digital landscape in Language Technologies, Humanities, and Heritage Science (HS). A significant outcome of the efforts of the Rome branch of CNR-ISPC is the development of two key resources: the DHeLO web app and the BiDiAr bibliographic collection. DHeLO (Digital Heritage Landscaping Platform) is designed to collect, store, and query metadata of research projects, products, and digital tools in Cultural Heritage (CH) and Heritage Science (HS). It aims to create a comprehensive disciplinary observatory by integrating data from multiple sources into a structured system that allows for complex queries and data indexing. This platform supports the FAIR principles (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability) and includes metadata standards based on the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI). BiDiAr (Bibliography of Digital Archaeology) functions as a relational database within Zotero, an open-source bibliographic tool. It compiles bibliographic entries relevant to digital archaeology, integrating themes and research outputs from the 'Archeologia e Calcolatori' journal. This database aids in thematic trend analysis and network analysis by linking bibliographic citations, enhancing the understanding of research dynamics and impacts within the E-RIHS community. Analyzing these resources reveals an exponential increase in virtual reality and 3D modeling products, driven by epistemological developments and the disruptive use of photogrammetric modeling. These tools not only enhance data accessibility and usability but also support interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation in digital heritage and archaeology.

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.

This study addresses the standardization of methodologies and data formats used in photogrammetric projects related to archaeology. The application of photogrammetry in recording and safeguarding cultural artifacts proves invaluable in various domains. However, the lack of a standardized method makes effective sharing of experiences and knowledge among practitioners difficult. This paper presents a methodological framework for photogrammetric data acquisition in the context of cultural heritage. This framework transcends the constraint of specific technical tools, embracing instead a level of abstraction consistent with the general principles of the Digital Data Curation paradigm and ontological encoding through the CIDOC-CRM model. Eventually, we provide a comparison between the FOPPA protocol with other three main acquisition protocols in order to test the interlingua that can enhance the communication between protocols. The overall goal of our research is to support systematic and methodical structured acquisition path, as well as systematic classification of metadata, facilitating the effective implementation of the methodology in new projects and promoting effective communication among existing projects.

After the initial enthusiasm for a hypothetical explosion of the metaverse phenomenon, which then waned, a careful analysis can reveal a possible dual model in the planning of this technology. On one hand, a closed, basically monopolistic, approach aimed at market concentration, and on the other a fragmented approach, starting from the bottom, consisting of small interoperating entities. This second model, in recent years, characterized in Italy a series of metaverse initiatives linked to the enhancement of Cultural Heritage and seems to be the most promising at the moment, provided that the longstanding issue of reproduction rights of the Heritage itself is addressed and resolved, preferably with an open approach: a crucial issue in the new digital scenarios.

Virtual Reality is one of the tools that has become widely used in recent years, in the field of cultural heritage. This tool has proven to be particularly valuable, especially for approaching intangible cultural heritage. Using free and open source software for 3D modeling and animation, such as Blender and Unreal Engine, the international research group, Praeteritas Urbes, focused on the reconstruction of historical events such as the inquisitions many Autos de Fe, which had a significant impact on the colonial history of Central America. In this paper, we will present the results of two different projects: ‘The Great Auto de Fe of Guatemala’, which took place in Santiago de Guatemala in 1554, and ‘The Auto de Fe of Maní’ (Yucatán, Mexico), which occurred in 1562. In both cases, our objective was to make simulations of these two events known and accessible to the public, using a precise methodology, following the scale of evidence, and adhering to the standards established in the Principles of Seville codified in 2017.

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.

The institutional goal of studying and mapping archaeological potential in SITAR in recent years has been to create an efficient tool to support urban planning and cultural heritage management: The Archaeological Potential Map of Rome. The Soprintendenza of Rome plays a key role in this effort, being responsible for the safeguarding and promotion of the city’s archaeological heritage. By developing a robust model of archaeological potential, the Soprintendenza can better anticipate and mitigate the impact of construction and development projects on archaeological sites. This proactive approach ensures that significant archaeological resources are identified and preserved before they are damaged or destroyed. The tool will facilitate informed decision-making in urban planning, helping to balance the needs of modern development with the preservation of historical sites. Moreover, it will support the regulatory framework that mandates archaeological assessments in high-potential areas, rationalisation of administrative processes and improving compliance with heritage protection regulations. Overall, the creation of an efficient archaeological potential model by the Soprintendenza of Rome underlines the commitment to preserving the city’s cultural heritage while accommodating its continuous urban evolution.

The GISTArc project envisions the implementation of a webGIS environment for the management and visualization of geoarchaeological data from research included in the Archaeological Map of Northern Campania project, conceived and directed by Stefania Quilici Gigli. The creation of the new system began with the normalization of some completed research data. They were managed in a GIS environment and were subsequently imported into a Web geodatabase, with the preparation of layers containing all the textual, graphical/ photographical and spatial information of the catalogued archaeological evidence, together with the required bibliographical references. The GISTArc project has a threefold aim: make the results of archaeological research conducted in some sectors of northern Campania more usable; allow the researcher to consult, integrate and enter the data from future research, thanks to the connection to the system via the Internet and the possibility of recording data directly during the survey; and finally access via standard desktop applications, such as Quantum GIS and ArcGIS, rather than the internet-based GISTArc geodatabase, in order to use advanced data analysis and representation functions that may not be available online. This paper describes the technical and scientific approach to the creation of our webGIS. It focuses on the system architecture, operative environment, and development tools.

For some years now, both in the archaeological and speleological fields, experiments have been carried out with portable MLS (Mobile Laser Scanner) or HMLS (Hand-held Mobile Laser Scanner) scanners that use LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) technology. This choice is due to their basic characteristics such as ease of use, reliability, efficiency and (a fact not to be underestimated) low costs compared to traditional indirect survey systems. These characteristics have made these tools extremely popular, especially since this technology can be used by owners of Apple devices, which has made it available for its tablets and smartphones, thanks to the ever-increasing sensor miniaturization. On the basis of some encouraging data presented in an archaeometry paper (Fiorini 2022) and from direct experiences in various underground sites proposed by several Italian caving groups, the authors have decided to test the device performance in the context of exploration and research on artificial cavities in the archaeological field which, very often, due to size and constraints, do not allow the use of other devices. Through the presentation of some case studies, it was possible to show the advantages and the limitations in the use of this technique in the archaeo-spelaeological field.

This study explores the GIS legacy data integration for a reassessment of the archaeological topography of Syracuse, with a focus on the Acquedotto del Paradiso. The research updates the understanding of Syracuse’s ancient waterscape by combining traditional archaeological methods with advanced digital technologies. Legacy data, historical maps, and recent fieldwork were systematically integrated into a GIS software, enhancing the spatial analysis and re-evaluation of the aqueduct’s route and construction phases. The study incorporated topographical bases, LiDAR point clouds, and autoptic analyses, revealing new insights into the aqueduct’s structural phases, including potential multi-phase construction and a double gallery system. The integration of these diverse datasets not only refined the known path of the aqueduct but also provided a detailed 2D and 3D visualization of it. This multidisciplinary approach emphasises the importance of combining traditional and modern techniques to improve the accuracy of archaeological topography, offering a more comprehensive understanding of ancient urban water supply systems in Syracuse.

The paper highlights the crucial role of legacy data in reconstructing archaeological sites and historical landscapes, emphasizing the need for digitization to safeguard and democratize access to heritage. Focused strategies for digital acquisition are essential, particularly in regions like Sicily with diverse cultural heritage facing challenges of preservation in the digital age. The project ‘Digital strategies for enhancing cultural heritage: the Villa del Casale of Piazza Armerina, from the late antique building site to the Museum Collection’ exemplifies this approach. Its foundation, aiming to bridge the gap between the Palazzo Trigona Museum and Villa del Casale through a web-based digital ecosystem, is firstly presented here. By adopting a multidisciplinary methodology, the project aims to gather scattered legacy data, advance scientific understanding, and develops precise datasets through historical research and digitization. The resulting digital ecosystem will feature immersive experiences and educational opportunities, enhancing accessibility and interoperability of digital contents. By integrating 3D artifact galleries with virtual models and legacy data, the project seeks to reveal the full potential of Villa del Casale cultural heritage, promoting appreciation and understanding for future generations.

In 2018 the Parco Archeologico del Colosseo set out on a three-year basis project, the ‘Risk Map of Floors Surfaces’, with the aim of preserving and monitoring all the in situ floor coverings of the Roman Forum and the Palatine Hill areas (mosaics, sectile, cement floors, spicata). In order to systematically address this methodological approach a team of archaeologists, architects and restorers designed and created a comprehensive and functional information management system, the ‘Risk Map of the Mosaic and Marble Surfaces’, together with a web-based application with integrated webGIS tools. The platform is used daily to record historical-archaeological and archival data and it has become an essential tool in planning interventions in the field. This approach brings the Parco to move from emergency maintenance to a continuous cycle of systematic maintenance. At the end of the first three-year phase of the project, an interactive web map was published online in May 2022 to share selected data related to the ancient floors of the Parco with public users. At this stage, the web map (https://cdrweb.parcocolosseo.it) allows to obtain descriptive texts and a gallery of images of the ancient floors; there are plans in the next future to improve data sharing through API and web map services.

The Viabundus pre-modern street map attempts to show medieval and early modern traffic connections. However, mapping medieval and pre-modern land routes comes with methodological challenges which are reflected upon in this paper. The reconstruction is based on written and archaeological sources, historical maps, and establishments of traffic infrastructure. Correlating the data with the origin places and finding places of pilgrim badges shows the research potential of the endeavor, as the simple co-visualization of the data already provides interesting connecting points.

The area of Castronovo di Sicilia was analysed by integrating different methodologies. In terms of the road network, it was decided to compare information from traditional written sources, such as the Itinerarium Antonini and texts from the Arab geographer al-Idrisi, with the results of the Least-Cost Path Analysis (LCPA) conducted using the QGIS plugin ‘movecost’. The primary objective of this analysis was to evaluate how the centrality of the Castronovo area was determined by environmental factors that made it easily accessible along the main long-distance routes connecting the island. At the same time, the analysis aimed to highlight similarities and differences between the written sources and the LCPA results.

The purpose of the paper is to introduce a QGIS plugin named ArcheoloGIS. It is developed in PYQGIS and tested by the community of Una Quantum Inc. (Italy). It consists of a decorator algorithm named Tabula Peutingeriana, that outputs points at a regular distance, every one Roman mile, along a given path. The article shows its use, the construction of a possible dataset and its evolution, as well as a case study of its application.

Since 2019, the LAD team has been working on the digitisation of the Carte topographique de l’Égypte through a GIS platform. The data contained in this historical cartography, published in the early years 1800s, play a key role in research on the ancient Egyptian landscape, yet they show a still image from the late 1700s. Taking a step towards a Linked Open Data (LOD), this paper illustrates the work of updating the already published dataset of the hydrography of Napoleonic cartography by the LAD team, to which new information useful for the study of the Ancient Egyptian landscape will also be added.

The MAGOH (Managing Archaeological data for a sustainable Governance of Heritage) project is a two-year project funded by Regione Toscana, co-funded by the Italian Ministry of Culture (MIC) and coordinated by MAPPA Lab of the University of Pisa. The project was designed to address the needs of the Superintendencies of Florence, Pistoia and Prato and of Pisa and Livorno to manage archaeological data. The project represents the development of the MAPPA project on a larger geographical area of 72,000 km², corresponding to almost all of Northern Tuscany. MAGOH system is composed of a web-based back-end which allows collecting textual and vector data and the archaeological documentation. It contains around 8000 archaeological interventions openly accessible through the web platform and reusable as open data following FAIR principles. Furthermore, through an appositively developed API, it is entirely interoperable with GNA, the National Geoportal for Archaeology, managed by the MIC.

RAPTOR is a geo-database built for the management of the archaeological administrative procedure of the Superintendencies. The system allows the recording of any kind of work carried out in any geographical context and the mapping of the archeological outcomes so that the archaeological maps can be constantly updated. A set of the archaeological data recorded in the system can now be freely accessed on the map by external users; archaeologists in particular can see full information of the archaeological sites. In order to support preventive archaeology, a new section of the system currently allows to map the preventive archaeology investigations and to obtain automatically the vector data of the archaeological sites within the project areas. Moreover, RAPTOR enables now to record and show the plans of the archaeological phases of each single site or urban context; on the other hand a new specific section is dedicated to the drawing of the areas of archaeological potential.

Music was one of the earliest kinds of art to explore the creative use of electronic and information technologies: new musical forms have assumed an increasingly artistic importance since the second half of the last century. Technology, at the same time, also is the cause of their rapid deterioration and risk of disappearance. The conservation of this heritage presents very different problems from those posed by traditional artworks. To this purpose this paper first presents some results for the conservation of audio documents: a well-tuned re-mediation methodology, an artificial intelligence based approach to detect audio tape discontinuities and access tools for renovating the listening experience of old analog media. To safeguard this heritage, it is not enough to digitize the content of recordings and documents, but all the related information, collected on the author’s personal archive, must also be accessible. The second part of this paper presents in detail, as a case study, the design and development of an information management system allowing the long-time preservation and the access to different documents, among them: audio, letters, musical scores, and manuscripts of the personal archive of an important electronic music composer.

The Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities and the University of Milan collaborate in the protection, preservation and valorisation of the large necropolis surrounding the Mausoleum of the Aga Khan in West Aswan. The first mission has been completed, the second is underway. Director Patrizia Piacentini describes the work and finds from the first mission and the experts from different fields (anthropology, palaeopathology, chemistry, botany, restauration, the computer sciences) that will be deployed during the second phase. Particular emphasis has been given to the historical meaning of the necropolis, in general, and, in particular, of tomb AGH026, which was excavated in 2019. They promise to yield information on the history and international contacts of the population of Aswan during the Late Pharaonic and Ptolemaic-Roman Period. Vicedirector Massimiliana Pozzi Battaglia enumerates some of the particular issues that were encountered from the point of view of conservation and transport. Inside Tomb AGH 026 different conditions were encountered, depending mostly on whether sand had covered a specific spot or not, which conditioned the preservation of the human bodies, cartonnage-making and wooden items and influenced their transportation and storage. Said Mahmoud Abd El-Moneim, General Director of Aswan and Nubia Antiquities Zone and Co-director of the mission at Aga Khan necropolis, widens the scope of the article to address other endangered sites that at present concerns of the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities. He describes the challenge posed by raising water levels and increased quarrying activity at Kom Ombo, Philae and Bigga, the rock art and palaeolake sites in the Aswan area.

Digital documenting of archaeological evidence represents a crucial tool in the study, preservation, management, and promotion of archaeological sites in remote regions and in fragile landscapes. In fact, in marginal environment, the knowledge related to archaeological heritage can quickly disappear, especially when policies to protect cultural heritage are unreliable or lacking. In the last few decades, archaeological fieldwork has seen the increasing use of Structure-from-Motion (SfM) photogrammetric technique as a tool for mapping and recording archaeological evidence. This technique allows the creation of highly detailed 3D models of archaeological sites, monuments, and artefacts from sets of simple but accurately taken pictures, thus preserving the data for further research or (digital) cultural valorisation. Nowadays, low-cost/commercial off-the-shelf sensors (professional and semi-professional digital cameras and smartphones as well) are widely available and accessible by most of the users operating in cultural heritage documentation. This has made the acquisition of field pictures in archaeological research much more flexible and cost-effective. 3D models obtained from these pictures through photogrammetric commercial software can be scaled with a known-measure providing highly detailed models for archaeological purposes. This enhances the ability of archaeologists to record archaeological features during field surveys and rapidly obtain 3D models. This is especially useful in the case of archaeological surveys carried out in remote and barely accessible areas. In this paper, we present the results of the application of the above-mentioned methods during archaeological surveys in the Sultanate of Oman, where several archaeological features have been recorded through SfM photogrammetry using commercial devices and portable scale-bars. We demonstrate that this is a highly-flexible and fast process to record archaeological heritage in low-accessible or fragile contexts, where a 3D model (with centimetric precision) represents a valuable dataset for further in-lab analysis and cultural dissemination.

Since 2011 an Eritrean-Italian archaeological mission has initiated research and excavation activities in the area of ancient Adulis, an emporium town located along the coast of the Horn of Africa on the Red Sea, in current Eritrea, documented by the sources as early as the 1st century AD and disappeared between the 7th and 8th centuries. The site, due to the historical and geographical context that determined its ancient splendour, invites us to broaden the research field, extending it from the excavation area to the commercial networks that, in ancient times, set in communication the African, Asian and Mediterranean cultures, without neglecting the intermediate scale, necessary to understand the ways in which the settlement was related to the territorial context and its resources. Among the natural resources water, in particular thanks to the presence of the Haddas, a seasonal watercourse that reaches significant flows, was certainly crucial to the development of the town and to the probable agrarian exploitation of its surroundings. Haddas itself was probably the cause of Adulis’ sudden destruction between the 7th and 8th centuries. Today, this watercourse is at same time one of the main resources and one of the major vulnerability factors of this portion of the coast, where the villages of Zula, Afta and Foro live a fragile equilibrium, seasonally endangered by its floods. The same protection of the important cultural heritage constituted by the site of Adulis today, in a way not entirely dissimilar from what happened in ancient times, depends on this balance.

During the past years both the political instability and the uncontrolled economic development in the Middle East caused several threats to the cultural heritage, including widespread looting and destruction of hundreds of archaeological sites, looting of museums, flooding of ancient settlements due to the construction of dams, damages to monuments and sites during armed conflicts. Notwithstanding the ongoing difficult condition of fieldwork, a new phase of archaeological research has begun with projects of landscape archaeology, excavations and extensive surveys carried out especially in Iraqi Kurdistan, allowing a detailed reconstruction of the settlement dynamics and historical development in the trans-Tigridian region, from the prehistory to the Islamic period. A new archaeological renaissance contributing to the process of peace-building through the empowerment of strong ties between the local communities and the cultural heritage.

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.

Sri Ksetra, in Myanmar, is an inhabited archaeological area in which rural landscape, widespread built heritage and archaeological evidences are intertwined with presence of numerous villages. In 2014 the three Pyu cities were named as the first UNESCO World Heritage Site in Myanmar: despite the premises, Sri Ksetra, Beikthano and Halin were not listed as ‘cultural landscapes’ sites but recognized as ‘cultural’ sites. Field research in 2015 highlighted emerging issues in the management and safeguarding of inhabited archaeological sites. The investigation raises critical issues concerning the conservation and management of the rural landscape as heritage, in view of a sustainable development of the site in favour of those who live there.

Ghoufi is located in the Aurès Valley, near the ‘Oued El Abiod’. Its location, next to the panoramic road RN31, is referred to as ‘Balcon de Ghoufi’ because - from above - you can perceive the depth of the canyon (500/1200 m) and the beauty of the place, scattered with Berber villages (vernacular semitrogloditic architecture), terracing, water collection systems, palm groves, orchards and gardens. The Aurès Valley - a thoroughfare since ancient times, a caravan route between the desert and the Mediterranean Sea - has been the subject of archaeological explorations by Pierre Morizot since 1957-1962, which established the chronology of the settlements. This valuable work has been supplemented by ongoing research. This territory still retains the morphological and hydrographic peculiarities that justify the Berber settlement choice despite the fact that unfortunately the places have been abandoned following a recent flood. From 2016 activities of survey and research, directed by the University Badji Mokhtar of Annaba and the Polytechnic of Milan resumed at Ghoufi. These activities are aimed in particular at surveying archaeological and architectural artefacts, conservation interventions to address deterioration and instability and valorisation projects. Since 2017 the research has been funded by the MAECI. The project begun with the collection of documentation and knowledge of the Ghoufi site in a GIS environment. It prefigured a preliminary scenario for its conservation and reuse, following an approach of archaeological sustainability respectful of the characteristics of the site, the territory and the Country.

Articles 106 and following of the Italian Legislative Decree 42/2004 raise some critical issues for those who want to reproduce cultural heritage and disseminate these reproductions. In 2014 and 2016, changes were introduced to article 108 of that same Legislative Decree: these, under certain conditions, make it easier to carry out such activities when they are not done for profit. This paper explains in particular the changes recently introduced by the Italian Law 124/2017.

The paper provides a brief overview on the cultural open data status in Italy, taking into consideration also the economic factor arising from data reuse. From a quick survey of Italian portals, and from European and national reports on this topic, a rather diversified and fragmented situation is discerned: this explains why there are significant limits to the further development of open culture, the actual availability of usable data and the triggering of economic activities.

In the last few years, public administrations and university archives have been promoting the dissemination of cultural heritage via the web, so making it accessible and shared. The aim of those promoting the Open Access movement was to encourage the democratic and fast distribution of scientific knowledge. Furthermore, the benefits of using and sharing linked data do not accrue only to the public administration, though this may indeed become more efficient and effective, but also profits the citizenry, as online tools can stimulate public participation and social inclusion.

The paper presents a GIS platform for the management of archaeological warehouses located in the territory of the IV Municipality of Rome. The need to create a GIS was owed to the distribution of archaeological material in at least 15 different stores. The contents and provenance of the boxes and their archaeological material have been recorded. A GIS platform has been developed, based on QGIS Desktop (version 3.0) and a geodatabase built on PostgreSQL/ PostGIS. As a cartographic base, both the existing cartography in the WMS format and the free downloadable cartography in .shp format were used. Further, a single table was created, merging the existing tables of different formats from the various warehouses examined.

The Archaeological Territorial Information System of Rome (SITAR) is a project of public and shared archaeology aimed at gathering all information on its archaeological assets. Data input into the database is operated by simple rules and minimum standards, which everyone working within the Roman archaeological territory should apply in order to normalise data description. QSITAR is a project developed within the QGIS framework. It aims at making the data entry user-friendly and standardized to allow the dataset to comply with SITAR guidelines

Landscape features are the result of interrelated actions of man-and-nature and can provide ecosystem services that need to be protected. Since urban planning policies can impact negatively on the conservation of cultural ecosystem services, urban plans must map them and make provision for their protection. For the Plan of Franciacorta (22 municipalities in Lombardy), we chose QGIS to set up a geo-database and map cultural heritage information. QGIS can provide more flexibility than a typical map, thanks to its graphics tools. To plan the development of actions to protect the landscape and suggest a range of planning opportunities for municipalities, an integrated representation of the landscape and protected ecological elements can highlight some critical issues: municipal borders can prove an obstacle in the implementation of supra-municipal projects and protected areas can include enclaves potentially vulnerable to urban pressures. Such maps have proved useful in guiding the planning choices in the development of the landscape protection schemes. The geo-location of critical aspects has brought out a range of inter-municipal planning opportunities.

The aim of this paper is to accurately and realistically describe the condition of the archives in which the documentation of excavations and, more in general, of the intervention related to archaeology in Italy should be kept. It is clear that, because of the backwardness of the regulations and the lack of personnel in the Archaeology Superintendencies, every project of data sharing and data advertising needs to start from an absolutely matter-of-fact evaluation of the state of affairs. Additionally, the author notes that the Bray-Franceschini reform, which separates Museums from the Archaeology Superintendencies, has worsened the situation adding cumbersome and almost insurmountable bureaucracy.

Which elements of the scientific documentation produced by archaeologists - especially those who are freelancers - in the field of excavation, scientific filing and research, are to be considered ‘processed data’? How can archaeologists see their ‘copyright’ protected, if there is any, when the documentation produced flows into the archives? Can the ‘raw data’, since it is beyond authorial prerogatives, be made public as a common heritage of mankind? This paper will try to outline the legitimacy of certain attributions and the ownership of choices regarding the diffusion of the archaeological documentation produced in controversial events in which overlapping public and private interests do not always coincide.

The original aim of SITAR was to create an instrument available to the community: the idea of ‘mapping’ a complex city like Rome was conceived with the intention of offering a participatory, open and shared data environment. For this reason, the system created in 2007 quickly converted into a webGIS platform capable of showing the topographic positioning of archaeological finds together with descriptive data sheets. Instead, the original documentation of the excavations, pending a decision by MiBAC, is only visible on request, also considering the instances submitted by data producers who have claimed copyright. However, a more in-depth examination of the legislation and in particular of the latest laws leads to the conclusion that the State is the only competent body in this area. Moreover, these rules clearly define the maximum accessibility, usability and reuse of data, guaranteeing full access to documents and administrative procedures, providing the legal basis for a knowledge democracy.

Professionals play an important role in archaeological research in Italy as producers of new data, working under the scientific direction of the Ministry for Cultural Heritage in the so called ‘commercial archaeology’. The Scientific documentation produced during these excavations, often unpublished, is archived by the Superintendencies. The management of these documents directly involves archaeologists both as producers and users: the recognition of their authorship - at least moral rights - would encourage higher quality documentation, and easy access to already known data would improve the quality of new research.

Intellectual property is generally regarded in human sciences as the right by whoever has produced data to become the owner of them and use them exclusively for years, sometimes for decades (at times dispersing them without permitting anyone else to view them). This practice is based on an incorrect interpretation of the principle of intellectual property, which must not be confused with intellectual ‘maternity’ (a term coined to indicate intellectual authorship), which instead must be protected and exploited more effectively and to a greater extent than today, using a system of accurate references as scientific research is well aware of. The term maternity was chosen because just as ‘…the mother is always certain’, the same may be said for the individual generating and producing the archaeological raw data. In order to determine the ‘mother’ of archaeological data, the research group of MAPPA Lab (University of Pisa) evaluated archaeological documentation in the light of Law 633/41 (Law on copyright and other related rights), articles 106 et seq. of the D.Lgs. 42/2004 (Code of Cultural Heritage and Landscape), D.Lgs. 196/2003 (Privacy Code) and D.Lgs. 30/2005 (Industrial Property Code), and of their more recent modifications.

Different conflicting ideas and values cross the debate about freedom of access to cultural heritage. This is nothing new: a similar debate arose in the past decades with confrontation among free software and proprietary software. The future will depend on the evolution of this cultural conflict and the political choices that will follow.

The paper addresses two of the main issues discussed during the workshop: the photographic reproduction of Cultural Heritage and the sharing of archaeological data. As far as photographic reproductions are concerned, an overview of the Italian laws on this topic is proposed, in particular about the evolution of art. 108 of the Cultural Heritage Code, recently modified. The new regulations reflect a more open attitude of the Ministry of Culture towards private photographic reproductions, which have been liberalised for personal use (study, research, education, non-profit use in general), while they still are subject to payment of fees in case of profit uses. The second part of the paper gives an overview of the activities of the Istituto Centrale per l’Archeologia (Central Institute for Archaeology) - ICA, aimed at the promotion of open access to archaeological data. ICA, which has among its tasks precisely the definition of standards and guidelines for publishing open archaeological data, is developing the National Geoportal of Archaeology, to foster the online consultation of topographic archaeological data; a first experimentation of its content started in 2018 with the digital cataloguing of information produced by preventive archaeology.

Open access and free reuse of cultural data is one of the more topical challenges for Digital Humanities. Great opportunities may instead be presented by the adoption of free licenses by museums, archives, and libraries, allowing free commercial reuse of digitization, as well as that ‘freedom of panorama’ still denied today in Italy.

The paper approaches the rights of reproducing Cultural Heritage items, in every possible aspects and for both commercial and non-commercial purposes. The legal situation is currently vague and not defined, as it is in other parts of Europe and the world. Two valid arguments are confronting each other: on the one hand, the public demand for data openness, on the other, the public institutions’ desire to earn money, at least enough to justify conservation expenses. After a discussion on the current situation, where digital revolution and 3D technology changed even the common understanding of ‘reproduction’ processes, a possible solution is presented, in order to satisfy both needs.

The article describes research carried out by the Istituto di Studi sul MediterraneoAntico (ISMA). The CNR-ISMA is involved in many excavations for which permits are granted by the Archaeological Superintendency and in several open access publishing projects. In relation to these research projects, the article discusses the position of the researcher of a public institution regarding access and dissemination of data.

The article summarizes the ethical implications in the following areas: a) open access of data and results related to cultural heritage; b) recognition/loss of intellectual property and paternity of moral rights; c) dissemination of the results of knowledge according to the article 30 of the Second Additional Protocol to the Hague Convention of 1954 and the Faro Convention.

Since 2011 the Archaeological Geographical Information System of Verona, SITAVR, has been implemented based on the existing and well-consolidated Archaeological Information Systemof Rome, SITAR, developed since 2008. The main objective of the two projects is collecting information about the archaeological findings regarding the two Italian urban centres with the aim to support a complete archaeological analysis and allow for easy data reuse. The purpose of this research is twofold: (i) archaeological studies, aimed to collect data and contents, and (ii) information systems applied to cultural heritage, aimed to organize, use and preserve the data on the basis of the innovations related to methodologies, technologies and standards. In this regard, the first step in SITAVR project was to create a domain model of archaeological data, by applying standard methodology for producing an abstract conceptual schema. Next steps were the definition of web services and a common format for data exchange; further in this direction was the creation of a mapping between this model and other international standards. The definition of the conceptual schema and the metadata, the common format for data exchange and the mapping on international standards have supported and encouraged the cooperation between SITAVR and SITAR projects. Moreover also some practical tests of interoperability between the two systems have been performed, thus demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed approach. In particular, an experiment regarding the integrated execution of some queries on the two systems (funerary contexts and the road network of the two towns) was successfully implemented. In conclusion, our work further demonstrates that interoperability requires an initial large investment of resources, but allows to achieve results in terms of data analysis that by means of non-integrated systems cannot be easily accomplished.

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.

In 2015 the Department of History and Cultures of the Bologna University took part in the Grande Progetto Pompei - Piano della Conoscenza, with the task of providing a modern and complete documentation of the so-called Lotto 3 in Pompeii. The new survey was carried out by means of integrated innovative diagnostic survey techniques in order to provide a total documentary research of the whole sector. In 2016 a new project was started in agreement with the competent Superintendency, and focused on the study and preservation of the House of Obellio Firmo, included in the Lotto 3 of the Roman city. The new research contemplates an in-depth analysis of the building, employing systematic laser scanning and photogrammetry methods to generate an accurate 3D model of the house. This model is going to constitute the starting point for the further analysis of the wall stratigraphies and for the mapping and monitoring of the structures’ state of decay. The full-scale analytical documentation of the building also includes a detailed geophysical mapping of all the accessible domestic spaces, by using the ground penetrating radar technique. The preliminary results achieved by the non-invasive prospecting survey, integrated with the analysis of the surviving walls and building techniques, supply valid information for the archaeological interpretation of the house’s history. In order to allow the management and sharing of the information collected, the data are going to be organised within a building information model (BIM) with a triple objective: the reconstruction of a fragment of the ancient urban landscape in Pompeii during the oldest phase, with particular attention directed to the Samnitic period; the outlining of a precise strategy of intervention for the restoration and preservation of the House of Obellio Firmo; the re-opening of the building to sightseeing tours and its restitution to public use.

This paper aims at a comparative reading of some archaeological remains in the island of Sardinia, starting from a reflection on the UNESCO discipline, which introduces a hierarchy of cultural heritage based on the level of worthiness of protection and provides enhanced protection for the goods that are on its list. The main goal of the study is to investigate in parallel the application of this ‘selective appreciation’ on the actual context of the protection of the so-called ‘real cultural heritage’ (article 9 of the Italian Constitution). The study proceeds by comparing some important sites on the island having similar contextualization, but different strategies for protection: the Archaeological Park of Porto Torres, Su Nuraxi in Barumini, registered since 1997 in the World Heritage List of UNESCO, and the archaeological area of Neapolis (Oristano). From comparisons and analysis carried out in selected areas it was possible to focus attention on some critical aspects of the UNESCO rules and on contradictions between the operational guidelines and the objectives that the organization provides for the protection of property. In the wake of new reforms for the reorganization of the Ministry of Heritage, Culture and Tourism, the critical issues discussed in this paper appear even more evident in Sardinia. The idea of a ‘protection of the exceptional’ appears to reduce the opportunities of intervention, by isolating the evidence from its context and making the action of protection inadequate for the territory and for the same items contained therein.

For networking, i.e. for the circulation and exchange of data on the cultural heritage, it is necessary to share rules and descriptive systems, placing them within a common perspective; it is necessary, in fact, to find a meeting point between the needs of those who produce the data and those who use them. Within the framework of standards for cataloguing defined by the Italian Central Institute for Cataloguing and Documentation (ICCD), the tools for the description and documentation of the archaeological heritage constitute a very structured corpus, a coherent system which helps computerized management that allows the integration of different cognitive components. As far as networking is concerned, the Institute has actively participated in the realization of both the project VIR - Vincoli in rete, to implement a platform for interoperability between the major databases of MiBACT (SIGECweb, Carta del Rischio and Beni Tutelati), and the European project ARIADNE, an infrastructure for sharing resources concerning archaeology, for scientific and study purposes. In addition, the ICCD set up a web site for the public use of the Catalogo generale dei beni culturali and a dedicated web area, namely Open ICCD, for the dissemination in open format of different types of cataloguing data.

The paper is about recent national and European legislation on data re-use. It argues that the time has come to realize that Open Access and copyright ought not to oppose each other. They should instead find ways to balance each other. Open Access is necessary for government-sponsored data. The industrial and creative industry cannot simply give up copyright; it must keep it in order to survive on the market. On the other hand, the industrial and creative industry ought to be allowed to make use of government-sponsored data. Legislation is on the way.

The co-operative model is a key concept of ICCU’s cultural policy. The Institute is responsible for some of the most important national infrastructures for accessing heritage and documentation of the Italian libraries, and over the years it has adopted an increasingly open data policy to facilitate the use and reuse of digital cultural heritage on an international scale. ICCU has a profound expertise in digitisation standards and guidelines; it manages the National Library Service, the union catalogue of over 6,000 Italian libraries and it coordinates, on behalf of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage Activities and Tourism, major digital cultural heritage projects at a national level such as Internet Culturale, the portal of the digital resources of Italy’s libraries, and CulturaItalia, the national aggregator for Europeana. ICCU also manages MuseiD-Italia, the digital library of the Italian museums, integrated in CulturaItalia portal. ICCU participates in many international initiatives for strengthening the cohesion of research and technical and semantic interoperability in the sector of cultural heritage, humanities, history and linguistic studies in order to create a digital ecosystem and effective e-infrastructures that can offer innovative tools and services able to exploit synergies and cooperative workflows in these related domains. The paper presents the main projects and activities carried out by ICCU at national and international levels that are investigating political and technical issues of the relation between the DCH sector and research infrastructures.

Recently, some fundamental updates of the Italian legislative framework clarified the topics of public access to and dissemination of data held by public administrations. Specifically, three legislative decrees broadened the scope of the existing laws and regulations to 1) allow public and private users to access more easily public data, 2) stimulate public administrations to better improve their data delivery systems, and 3) activate both new freely and pay-per-download data provisioning procedures, for the benefit of both public and private users. In this evolving scenario, during the last ten years the SITAR Project demonstrated that for the Public Archaeology of Rome and its broad territory it is necessary to 1) achieve a total accessibility of scientific data, also through participative processes and tools allowing ubiquitous access to and real integration, and consequently, validation of information; 2) engage in this participation all users involved in data and knowledge (re-)production and sharing, from scientists and scholars, to public administrators and officers, up to professionals as well as members of the public and all other stakeholders. In this paper, the authors deal with the newly designed SITAR Project data licensing policy illustrating the legal bases on what the SITAR administrative procedures are being implemented and experimented about data openness and their public access and use. The authors also try to offer a contribution to the long cultural debate of these last decades about interrelationships between scientific research and administrative actions of public bodies, public access to data and legal reservations, creativity in archaeology and copyright-copyleft of scientific data produced by public administrations and/or professionals on behalf of the former.

In most cases, cultural heritage refers to creative works whose copyright has expired a long time ago or even never existed. This situation can give the impression that those cultural assets are undoubtedly in the public domain and there are no restrictions for their reproduction. This paper, based solely on Italian law, tries to show, on the one hand, that their public domain status is still partial due to a distorted and manipulative use of so-called intellectual property; on the other hand, it demonstrates that there are far more incisive constraints arising from administrative law and an entrenched bureaucratic and contractual practice which is contrary to a free and unconditional reproducibility of the cultural heritage. The paper explores the most common tricks used to ward off the danger of the public domain and presents the legal instruments required to make these cultural assets and resources really open. Furthermore, this paper offers a comment, based on a critical approach, about the most relevant rules provided by the Italian legal system for this legal and cultural subject.

The subject of the access and free reuse of cultural data is one of the more topical challenges in the modern democracy of the knowledge. The full affirmation of this principle, still finding today however several cultural obstacles both on a cultural and a regulatory point of view, would allow to rethink toward more including forms the public administration’s approach to cultural heritage. This paper focuses on the request, advanced by the movement Fotografie libere per i Beni Culturali to extend the free photography for research purposes to public archives and libraries, lately fulfilled by the law n. 124/2017 which entered into force on the 29th of August. Great opportunities may instead be presented by the adoption of licenses by museums, archives, and libraries, allowing free commercial reuse of digitization, as well as that panorama freedom today still denied in Italy. The paper concludes by examining another category of cultural data, namely documentation related to the archaeological excavations preserved in the MiBACT archives: free access to this type of data could encourage not only archaeological research, but also more efficient conservation and promotional activities.

The collaboration between the SITAR and SITAVR projects, started in 2013, has continued thanks to a shared process of consolidation including: the conceptual model (GeoUML), the metadata, the documentation of the physical database and the publishing of data in XML format. The work also continued with a study on modelling and managing the time dimension in the context of archaeological databases and an experiment aiming to use the developed methodology and tools on a small town, Isola della Scala, in the province of Verona as part of the SITAIS project. Given the availability of three autonomous systems for three different territories linked by a single conceptual model, it was possible to test interoperability between the three implemented systems. The first experiment was developed by navigating an XML complex schema, where all the catalogued objects and associations between them were represented. A Web Feature Service was implemented for accessing data and a web application is currently being developed to allow users to query, navigate data and interrogate the three systems at once. A second experiment involved the generation of an XML simplified schema, where data are accessible on a single and flat form. Again, a Web Feature Service was implemented and a common GIS software was used to visualize the data provided by this service. The sharing of a conceptual model and vocabularies proved to be a winning approach for archaeological research and for the future interoperability between systems.

ARCHIVE MAME is a digitization and cataloging project of the archivistic collection at the National Museum of the Middle Ages (MAME) in Rome. This project was possible thanks to an agreement signed in 2015 between the Museum and the National Research Council (CNR). Established in 1967, the National Museum of the Middle Ages preserves and exhibits materials dating from the fourth and the fourteenth century coming mainly from the city of Rome and from the central areas of Italy. Among its finds there is an excellent group of finds from the two most important Longobard necropolises in central Italy, Nocera Umbra and Castel Trosino. It is composed of weapons kits, jewelry, ivory, glass and bronze vessels and ceramics. The archive consists of repertory records and models following the history and the evolution of archaeological objects and pieces in the collection.

The Kingdom of Sicily Image Database uses new media technologies to reframe our understanding of medieval Europe by focusing on the role of the built environment for the formation of state identity in the medieval Kingdom of Sicily ruled by Norman, Swabian, Angevin and Aragonese dynasties (950-1420). The theme is important for two reasons: the significance of South Italy as a prototype of multicultural state formation and the highly fragmentary (war bombardment, earthquakes, urban transformation) state of the sites that played a central role in the power structures of this new state. A comprehensive database of historical images of monuments and cities (prints, drawings, maps, photographs, etc.) made by scholars, artists and travellers from the 15th to the 20th centuries, can enable scholars and the public to recover the appearance of the landscape, of cities, and of individual monuments prior to radical renovations or destructions. An interdisciplinary research team is conducting a systematic survey and critical cataloguing of images dispersed in the archives, museums and libraries of Italy, Europe and US.

The ‘Marmora Phrygiae’ project deals with some of the main issues related to the study of ancient quarries and building sites with a systematic approach, integrating the skills of experts from different disciplines: archaeology, ancient topography, art history, architecture, geology, geophysics, chemistry, geochemistry, biology, remote sensing, computer science, and Roman law. This paper summarizes the main scientific results of the project and the computer techniques used for implementing the Marmora Phrygiae online geodatabase, a system aimed at data presentation on the web, sharing knowledge through Open Data. The Marmora Phrygiae database dynamically stores the results of archaeological research and archaeometric analyses in order to publish them online at the end of the project: after a registration process, free access to available data will be allowed. The same database is also interfaced to Geoserver, a web-oriented cartographic engine, in which the coordinates of each feature (monuments, quarries, artefacts, stone samples), acquired by a high-precision topographic GPS, are stored. This solution allowed acquiring important new data on the marble extractive district of Hierapolis, the organization of the urban building sites during the Roman Imperial age and the Early-Byzantine period, and their dynamics of supplying stone materials within the overall ancient marble extractive district of south-western Turkey.

As established by the Italian cultural heritage laws, as part of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Activities and Tourism (MiBACT), the Central Institute for Cataloguing and Documentation (ICCD) coordinates procedures and tools for cataloguing and documenting cultural heritage. The ICCD has consistently focused its operational policies on dialogue with other institutions involved in the management of cultural heritage (other offices of MiBACT, Italian Regions, the Italian Episcopal Conference, Universities and Research institutions and, more recently, foundations and private associations). The need to identify rules and methods governing the sharing of knowledge in the world of cataloguing has become a priority in the era of the computer revolution. In the 1990s the first definitions of standard models for the acquisition of data and protocols for the exchange of information were established. Those tools have gradually evolved into the current system of regulations. The attention to open data/linked open data is, for the ICCD, the natural outcome of an institutional process always aimed at comparing and sharing knowledge. With the development of SIGEC (General Catalogue Information System), which allows the management of the entire production process of cataloguing, the ICCD facilitates interoperability with external systems and the information process for the public use of data. The paper focuses on the strategies and tools developed by the ICCD on the basis of its experience, to allow the widest sharing of knowledge.

Recent changes introduced by the Italian Artbonus Decree indicate that it is now possible to reproduce and communicate to the public photographs of cultural heritage objects under certain conditions (those indicated in section 108, paragraph 3-bis of the Code of cultural heritage and landscape). Systematic interpretation suggests that the rules in the Code of cultural heritage and landscape do not prevent the so called ‘freedom of panorama’, i.e. the possibility to take and publish external and panoramic views of monuments and sites considered as part of the cultural heritage.

The most radical change in human history, which occurred rapidly within a few decades, is leading to a loss not only of historical memory, but also areas of expertise and thus socio-economic alternatives to the new globalized society. At the same time, the holistic approach to the study of historical evidence has finally dealt a blow to the system of protection that uses inadequate tools. As practiced by the specialized Superintendencies, it is no longer able to deal with the unending proliferation of material data which is now considered useful for the understanding of our past. This dual crisis challenges the redesign of the system of protection implemented by Dario Franceschini, current Minister of the MiBACT (Ministry for Cultural Heritage, Activities and Tourism), launched with the Prime Minister’s Decree of August 2014 and continued with the new proposal of January 2016. Redesign, however, will not improve the current situation, without a real polycentricy able to involve a plurality of actors and to propose new meanings of the past for the man of the twenty-first century.

Archaeological research responds to the ultimate purpose of increasing common knowledge, the conservation and dissemination of which are entrusted to the State on behalf of the citizens. Following this basic principle, which is not only legal but first and foremost cultural, the SITAR, a project designed and managed by the archaeological Superintendency of Rome, is dealing with the issue of making archaeological data accessible to the public. The office’s archives represent a major repository of archaeological field reports, often unpublished. To date, SITAR has made archaeological data freely accessible online, through the publication of summary sheets of information extracted from field reports, previously validated by State Officials. Up to now the documents have been accessible only to registered users, but they are not published online because of privacy protection and authorship rights. The debate about the rights of publication of those documents is still open, so this persistent legal uncertainty prevents this great fund of knowledge from taking advantage of the digital revolution.

RAPTOR (Ricerca Archivi e Pratiche per la Tutela Operativa Regionale) is a geo-database developed in order to supply officials of the Italian Superintendency for Archaeological Heritage with a user-friendly instrument to handle those daily administrative practices that have an impact on the territory. The system, two years after it was presented for the first time during the 2012 ArcheoFOSS, has been tested and developed in order to refine the computer-supported procedure that now enables us to manage the whole variety of work carried out in every kind of geographical context, including urban and marine sites. The mapping of the archaeological results is also envisaged. Part of the computer procedure consists of a quick recording system, which allows the official archaeologist to register the basic data including geographic features of an archaeological site or of areas with no archaeological evidence. At the same time, a more detailed analysis is also possible. Geometries can be linked to the site information sources and the whole available scientific record can be uploaded. In this way, it is also possible to manage the most complex sites. Archaeological firms can log on to the system to upload the excavation reports drawn up in line with the standards outlined by the Superintendencies.

In 2011 a joint venture between the Archaeological Superintendency of Veneto and the University of Verona initiated a project for the creation of a Geographical Information System to collect the huge amount of data related to the historical and archaeological heritage of the city. In order to avoid the development of this project from scratch, a very useful collaboration was initiated with the Special Archaeological Superintendency of Rome and, in particular, with the team in charge of creating a similar application (SITAR Project). During the project, the application schema was documented using GeoUML while the metadata for the dataset were described using ISO Standard 19115, that allows us to bring standardization and define interchangeable data formats for archaeological data among several European institutions. At the same time, all of the available data, already published or not, were being collected and validated under the supervision of the Superintendency. A lot of work still remains to be done on the two fronts. On the technical side, the existing user interface has to be improved and put on the web; on the contents side, geological data and data for the medieval period have to be added to the database, in order to allow studying the evolution over time of the area we are examining.

Morphological changes in the coastline are related to numerous natural factors of erosion and accumulation, in addition to human actions. These changes have their effects on the entire coastal landscape and, over time, they have left their mark on the territory, enabling us, with the help of archaeological analysis, to hypothesize the scenario of previous landscapes. In this project, we tested a multidisciplinary study of these phenomena, through an innovative system for the interpretation of the modern landscape, based on the diachronic reading of previous landscapes. A level of knowledge of this type implies the integrated management of a large amount of heterogeneous data. Datasets available for this project include information acquired through the use of instruments to scan the seabed as well as data from aerial and satellite platforms both historical and recent, as well as Lidar data. QuantumGIS has proved the most effective tool to manage all the data through their indexing. Geographical data has been stored in a geospatial database based on PostgreSQL with PostGIS extension. All the data acquired were managed through QuantumGIS thanks also to the acquisition of new information. When the project is completed, it will be possible to reconstruct the evolutionary dynamics that led to the current situation and also to predict, with relative accuracy, future scenarios. In this paper we are presenting the preliminary results of this study, focusing on the methodologies used and the results obtained.

The Sistema Informativo Archeologico di Roma Antica e del suo Territorio was created by the Sapienza University of Rome. The system was initially designed on a proprietary software platform. Its complexity stems from the fact that it included all the structures and the objects found in Rome within the Aurelian walls. A research team led by F.G. Cavallero assisted by G. De Rosa is dealing with the system migration to an open source software (QGIS and PostgreSQL/PostGIS). The difficulties encountered in this process and the strategies used to overcome them are the subject of this paper.

The study case of the Roman aqueduct of Alba Fucens, Massa d’Albe (AQ), Abruzzo region confirms that GIS is an essential tool for archaeological research on the territory and for the planning of archaeological safeguarding activity. The colony of Alba Fucens, founded at the end of the 4th century BC, during the late-republican age, was provided with water by an aqueduct that, thanks to the channel and to an inverted siphon, was capable of bringing water from a distance of 10 km. All research records are organized within the GIS, which is a necessary tool for many reasons: the development of the study, the constant verification of the data, the publication of the research results, and also the archaeological safeguarding and monitoring activities. The GIS open source (gvSIG) is the ideal common platform for the institutions working on the cultural site (Superintendency for the Archaeological Heritage, University, Natural Regional Park), as it allows us to share the data and to perform particular thematic elaborations and planning activities. The possibility to share the difficulties with the community of reference (gvsig-italian at lists.osgeo.org) and to participate in their solutions, stimulates open software development and assures the longevity of GIS products, which is always subject to upgrades and research requirements. On the GIS platform other kinds of useful information are mapped, considering that the aqueduct runs in an urbanized area. Therefore, every single problem detected can be marked for security and maintenance intervention. The GIS platform can also be used for touristic control and vigilance purposes. The development of a walking tour along the course of the aqueduct, from the sources to the archaeological area of Alba Fucens, which is inside the Sirente-Velino Natural Regional Park, will allow visitors to discover it and to enjoy learning about the ancient Roman construction, thanks to a guide and to the educational contents using the webGIS interface.

Through modern technologies we are able to use medieval documents for topographic studies in a more efficient way. It is easier to read and use a document once it has been digitized and recorded in a topographic database. The present study is based on a partially computerized archive of one of the most important medieval cartularies, the Regestum Farfense. The topographic database was linked to a GIS software, QGIS, in order to create a thematic cartography about the properties of the Farfa abbey. Both cartography and database were made with open source software (LibreOffice and QGIS). Thematic layers were created using data collected in the database, which contains some important fields, such as Chronology, Property Type (Fundus, Casales, Gualdus, Curtis, Ecclesia, Monasterium), Acquisition Type (Purchase, Donation, Exchange), Location (Known-Hypothetical, Exact-Areal), useful for cartographic purposes. Thanks to these computer applications, new insights into some important historical and archaeological questions emerge, like the role of the abbeys in Italy during the Lombard and Carolingian periods. In addition, it is vital for research activity to be able to read a document in a faster and easier way. In fact, documents often reveal new information when we manage them with new instruments.

The paper describes a project named Le fonti per la storia, a heterogeneous collection of historical sources organized in a unitary and homogeneous archive, which is the result of a five-year research project. The sources investigated - mainly archaeological, archival, architectural, art historical, bibliographic, oral, photographic and based on material culture - all are to be found in the Primiero (TN) territorial district. The project has developed a complex database system, organized by different levels of analysis and by fields of investigation that are closely interrelated. This system is totally based on open source data management programs and the whole project is Creative Commons-licensed.

The intent of the OpenCiTy Project is to create a platform able to produce, collect, manage and share heterogeneous information, in order to increase community awareness about the history of Catania. The first goal is to provide a powerful and versatile instrument linked to the research needs, the protection, enjoyment, appreciation and promotion of the Cultural Heritage. The core of the project consists of a relational database specifically structured and placed inside an Open Source GIS Platform, allowing a full management and analysis of the data on a geographic basis. The data in the platform will cover different areas of interest. The archaeological, monumental, environmental and cultural evidence of Catania are stored with a high level of detail in order to offer a better understanding of the complex urban stratification. The final output is represented by a webGIS platform showing the information on geographical base.

ArcheoFi is a tool for sharing archaeological information between the City of Florence, the Superintendence and private companies operating in the city. Its purpose is to help scholarly research and build a city planning project that takes into account the complex reality of the urban underground. ArcheoFi aims to provide a simple interface, easily accessible via the web, with the main archaeological data and maps of excavation from 1860 to the present. ArcheoFi has a public open access part and a private one, accessible thorough a login and password. The public part is a web site that allows search of archaeological data, viewing of photos and maps. The private part is reserved for authorized users and contains more specific information and the forms for data entry. ArcheoFi is made with open source client and server side software (php, js, java). The data is stored in a Postgres-PostGIS geo-database and is shared through WMS services that can be displayed in all desktop GIS.

The ability to index and quickly retrieve heterogeneous information from a shared space, makes the cloud an extremely effective tool for the remote sharing of archaeological data. It becomes even more useful when there is a cartographic engine in the dashboard that can handle the geographic information in the cloud. The Laboratory of Ancient Topography, Archaeology and Remote Sensing of IBAM-CNR, is experimenting a GIS cloud entirely made by integrating a variety of resources with open source licence. The cloud platform of the system is implemented with the software own cloud, which, through a MySQL database server, implements the access control. A hyperlink in own cloud redirects users to the mapserver, which at this stage of development is QGIS server; the data entry is done through QGIS Desktop and a QGIS project allows users to enter data into a PostgreSQL db. Through this configuration, data entered from any desktop device are available immediately in the cloud. Testing of the system has already begun on Lecce and Taormina, where the creation of archaeological digital maps are in progress. These research activities are parts of more complex projects that also involve other agencies: the Department of Cultural Heritage, University of Salento for the Archaeological Map of Lecce, and the Department of Classical Studies, University of Messina and the Superintendence for Archaeological Heritage and Environment of the Province of Messina for the Archaeological Map of Taormina.

On the occasion of the 2013 edition of ArcheoFOSS, the SITAR Project presented the first steps towards the setup of a Knowledge Base dedicated to the Archaeological Information System of Rome. After one year, it is interesting to present a summary of the progress of this platform. The SITAR Knowledge Base was created to promote collaboration among different partners and to facilitate the dialogue and the interaction of the users with the Information System. The project itself intends to be a meeting-point between the Institution, that has the objective to preserve, organize and represent archaeological data, and all the parties that need to use and reuse them. The dialogue is well-supported also by a wiki environment, a SITAR-glossary with official definitions of the specific terms of the project and with an open wiki for the contributions of specialized users. This paper intends to explore the perspectives of the SITAR Knowledge Base, as a system for open content management and as a dissemination instrument for archaeological and technical knowledge, creating constant two-way traffic for the construction of new archaeological knowledge while, at the same time, disclosing to the public the dataset represented through the webGIS encountering the communities that live in the city in a perspective of Public Archaeology.

In relation to the project approved by the European Commission, the Direzione Generale per le Antichità has been charged with the responsibility of implementing the Knowledge Plan in accordance with the Cabina di Regia of the Consiglio Superiore per i Beni Culturali e Paesaggistici guidelines. A working group, composed of archaeologists from MiBACT in cooperation with informatics experts, was therefore established with the objective of creating a logic system capable of gathering and managing all information pertaining to the Pompeii area. The research and analysis have culminated in the project currently presented, and is the realization of an informatics system that integrates technical-descriptive with geographical and cartographical data, permitting the analysis of all the archaeological and architectural components of the ancient City. The project has enabled an evaluation of the state of preservation and deterioration factors, with the object of implementing a programmed conservation with periodic inspections and interventions that are not solely based on emergency factors.

The Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo Unico delle biblioteche italiane (ICCU) is an Institute of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e il Turismo; it manages the National Library Service, the union catalogue of over 5,000 Italian libraries, and is responsible for providing the standard rules and regulations for cataloguing all types of materials ranging from manuscripts to multimedia documents and for digitization of CH. ICCU has extensive experience in digitization standards and guidelines and coordinates on behalf of the Ministry major digital cultural heritage projects at the national level such as Internet Culturale, the portal of the digital resources of the Italian libraries, and CulturaItalia, the national aggregator for Europeana. At the European level the expertise of ICCU’s staff is dedicated to the coordination of top level European initiatives in DCH, such as MINERVA, the series of 3 projects that ran from 2002 to 2008 for the harmonization of the policies in DCH, and more recently the projects for contributing content to Europeana like: ATHENA, Linked Heritage, ATHENA Plus. ICCU coordinated also projects to bring the CH on the wave of the e-Infrastructures: DC-NET project, INDICATE and DCH-RP that investigated other political and technical domains of the relation between the DCH sector and e-Infrastructures. ICCU is also partner in many European projects, such as PARTAGE and ARIADNE, a research infrastructure in Archaeology.

ARIADNE brings together and integrates existing archaeological research data infrastructures, so that researchers can use the various distributed datasets and new and powerful technologies as an integral component of the archaeological research methodology. ARIADNE is funded by the European Commission under the Community’s Seventh Framework Programme, contract no. FP7-INFRASTRUCTURES-2012-1-313193. The project started on 1st February 2013 and runs for 48 months.

Social sciences and humanities, and cultural heritage have been investigated at the National Research Council of Italy (CNR) since the agency’s reform in March 4, 1963. From that date on, CNR has made it possible for the Italian SSH and CH communities to undergo a rapid and far-reaching development, which has brought about vital technological innovations - such as the setting up of Italy’s first digital library in 1964 - as well as substantial services to the country - one thinks of the industrial applications provoked by the rapid improvement of cultural heritage restoration techniques in the aftermath of the Florence flood of November 4, 1966. Today SSH and CH researchers are part of the Department of Social Sciences and Humanities, and Cultural Heritage (DSU-CNR). At the center of DSU-CNR investigations are all social objects, be they material or immaterial (artifacts, books, social findings), but always set by a person, which now makes a repositioning of technological development increasingly urgent. Persons are not out there only to make sure machines work, they are expected to ask the questions that human beings find it necessary to pose while proceeding along the via humanitatis. Culture is about people that take part in the project of constructing Europe as a society that ought to be less unequal, less unjust, less segregating, and less passive with regard to differing starting environments. CNR researchers work in synergy and express the potentials of diverse sectors. They have integrated findings and methods of history, philology, linguistics, archaeology, physics, chemistry, and ICT. Among the new cross-disciplinary fields that have emerged are: heritage science, the ageing society and migration studies. The result is a multidisciplinary context, which is dynamic and productive, and in which natural sciences dialogue with humanities for the sake of cultural heritage cognition, conservation and valorization.

In line with the policy promoted by the Italian National Research Council (CNR) since the 1960s for the convergence of the two cultures, we provide an illustration of the long and fruitful path followed by today’s Institute for Ancient Mediterranean Studies. In the early 1980s, the launch of an innovative research programme gave rise to the first experiments in computer applications in archaeology. This approach, in which data formalisation was already a core issue, subsequently led to the establishment of the scholarly journal Archeologia e Calcolatori and, more recently, to the commitment to open access philosophy. The main goal was to open up new research directions, resulting from the convergence and integration of tools and objectives shared by different disciplines. Today, the whole process substantially benefits from the choice of making data openly available to the research community.

At the Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici of Lazio Region, a number of diverse databases are in use for cataloguing and management of cultural heritage. The existing databases have been designed in different moments, for different purposes and in different ways, so interoperability is impossible between them. In order to ensure interoperability and to promote the sharing of cultural information and services, the Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici of Lazio has started a collaboration with the Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Roma (SSBAR), which since 2007 has been developing SITAR. The data model and database, created by SITAR for the Italian Capital, will be used as a basis for a common infrastructure, so the previous databases can progressively flow into a unique platform for sharing cultural data with an increasingly wide audience, not only researchers and public bodies, but also all citizens.

The paper gives an overview of the various databases currently used in the Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici of Etruria Meridionale, which are non-interoperable due to the adoption of different technical solutions and data-models. The idea is to bring together the existing databases and make them interoperable and accessible to a wide audience, creating a sort of Sistema Lazio, a unique platform for the storage, management and sharing of the Southern Etruria cultural heritage. The main goals are the systematization of the archive documents, their digitization and, ultimately, their sharing with the stakeholders: public bodies, researchers and professionals, in order to make data available for study, research, preventive archaeology, but also edutainment and tourism. In order to reach this objective, a collaboration with the Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Roma (SSBAR), which is developing SITAR, was started. SITAR is designed to store the archaeological record of Rome and thanks to its modular and easy to extend data-model, can be easily reused for a different and wider territorial context like Southern Etruria.

The advanced Information and Communication Technologies, combined with the development of applications based on artificial intelligence, open new possibilities to investigate Cultural Heritage in depth. The main objective of this process is to promote the integrated knowledge of CH within its context, so that it becomes a factor of growth in the cultural, social and economic system, in specific geographical areas. Through GRID computing it is possible to directly access by web distributed databases, creating a network of different archives. In addition, a virtual reality reconstruction of areas and ontologies, supplementary capabilities designed to support intelligent fruition and multilingualism, for some time have been extensively investigated with significant results. The archaeological heritage has been the subject of investigation and study at ENEA-UTICT in a number of project activities. This paper intends to propose conceptual and methodological reflections for a fruitful interaction with SITAR.

The technological aspect has been one of the major challenges that the Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Roma (SSBAR) has faced for the implementation of SITAR, starting with the organization of the system up to the creation of a network infrastructure. Thanks to the help and support of the Italian research and education network GARR, a fiber optic link has been created between GARR and the head office of SSBAR, Palazzo Massimo, to reliably manage the transmission of the huge amount of data created by SITAR. In addition, the Superintendence is going to adopt the newly released IdP in the Cloud GARR service to join the IDEM federation for privilege and security management in data access and for offering authenticated services in the web application SITAR. In this paper, we will highlight the strategic role of the ICT and the high-bandwidth research and education networks in providing a virtual environment to encourage and facilitate collaboration between archaeologists and researchers.

Law no. 221 of December 17, 2012 amended the Digital Government Code (CAD), and imposed a change in the Public Administration’s approach to transparency towards the citizen. The General Secretariat of MiBACT directs the policy of the Ministry concerning transparency, publication of data and open data and develops new official positions on this subject. Regulatory updates on cultural heritage are indeed necessary in order to consistently regulate the sharing of digital cultural resources and knowledge, and replace current approaches, such as the principle of open-by-default, which are still insufficient to define a suitable legal framework for new forms of copyright/copyleft.

The pilot project dati.culturaitalia.it started in 2012 to build up a Linked Open DataLOD) Service that will progressively make available open data-sets from the web-portal CulturaItalia, the Italian national aggregator for Europeana. The application, online since 2013 (http://dati.culturaitalia.it/), was designed to allow the resources aggregated by CulturaItalia to be involved into large semantic networks after exposing, sharing and connecting data according to LOD principles. CulturaItalia is the Portal of Italian Culture managed by the Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo Unico (ICCU), in which are involved cultural institutions - museums, archives and libraries - from national, regional and local levels. Metadata aggregated by CulturaItalia, encoded according to the XML schema PICO Dublin Core Application Profile (PICO AP), were mapped into two different RDF schemas: the Europeana Data Model (EDM) and the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CIDOC-CRM). In particular, the OWL implementation named Erlangen CRM was chosen for implementing the mapping. RDF triples mapped into Erlangen CRM were then enriched with links to URIs identifying instances of internationally established RDF resources for geographic names and authority files for personal and corporate names, such as GeoNames and Virtual International Authority File (VIAF).

At present, the law is improving in order to make possible to share the public sector information with civil society, creating an ever-increasing body of knowledge. Information is not only evidence of the work done by the administration, but also the chance for an economical rise. Moreover, data help to enhance the quantity and quality of available information, in virtue of derived data circulation. This is very important if it is applied to the informative heritage preserved in public archives, filled with unpublished scientific data. The Geographic Archaeological Information System of Rome (SITAR) is a project of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e il Turismo, which aims to open archaeological heritage data of the Roman urban area to the general public (http://sitar.archeoroma.beniculturali.it/). SITAR webGIS portal allows the online consultation of archaeological data: for every record in the database the topographic location is provided, together with a descriptive sheet containing administrative information (type of survey, commissioning body, executing company) and scientific ones (type/function, chronology, description, etc.). The information provided correspond to a minimum level of knowledge, which is adequate to allow an aware re-use of data for research, conservation and urban planning aims. Appropriate licenses would be provided, in order to make it possible to cite the name of the scientific director and of the field archaeologist, author of the archaeological report, allowing the preservation of the information about the provenance of scientific data.

Data and the possibility to circulate and spread them are the key infrastructure of archaeology. Part of the (interpretative) information underlying data is connected to the know-how of each single researcher. Data, instead, are firm points. In this paper, we describe how open data can be used for determining the archaeological potential. We used a sizable number of datasets, in order to consider the problem of estimation of archaeological potential in all of its aspects: archaeological, historical, and geomorphological data. As the identification of relations among finds is a key issue in archaeological interpretation process, we applied a modified version of the PageRank algorithm. The procedure included a categorization of archaeological data, the assignment of initial values of potential to the available data, the creation of geomorphological maps, the definition of functional areas (i.e. the levels of spatial and functional organization: urban, suburban and rural areas), and the application of the PageRank based algorithm. The model has been applied on the urban area of Pisa, and tested through the data of 14 new cores. The map of archaeological potential consists of the composition of the 7 layers, one for each archaeological period under consideration. The results, including the archaeological potential map, are to be considered as the first steps towards an automatic, formally definable, and repeatable approach to the computation of archaeological potential.

Between 2011 and 2013, a project for developing the archaeological information system of Verona (called SITAVR) was started by the University of Verona and the Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici of Veneto and with the financial support of the Regional Agency and the Bank institute Banca Popolare di Verona. The first step was determined by a collaboration with the Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Roma (SSBAR), which since 2007 has been developing an Information System for the Italian capital. Thanks to the support from the colleagues and the conventions between the public administrations involved, it was possible to start the project using the data model and databases created for Rome as a basis. The second step was to study and adapt these artefacts to a smaller town like Verona, taking into consideration the different cataloguing necessities. During this phase, a new methodology (based on GeoUML model) and its tools were used in order to analyze the database of Rome and to create the conceptual schema as a reverse engineering process. The usage of the GeoUML tools allows us to obtain automatically the physical schema and the documentation for the new database of Verona. All the data collected will be available to the general public, both for a better public comprehension of the Information System content and eventually for reuse in other similar projects.

RAPTOR (Italian acronym for Ricerca Archivi e Pratiche per la Tutela Operativa Regionale) is a geodatabase specifically designed to manage the administrative procedures of the Italian archaeological superintendencies. The software was originally developed by the Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici of Friuli Venezia Giulia and it is currently shared with the Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici of Lombardy and Veneto, in order to define and support the use of common standards. The system does not require any particular skill in computer sciences and, given the lack of human and financial resources, it is intentionally structured to allow an autonomous approach for each user, in order to offer the possibility of a collaborative work. Currently the development has been focused on a suite of applications, which helps to redact those documents that are in direct relationship with the territory and cultural heritage protection. Thanks to a wizard, which guides the Superintendency officers through the compilation of few simple forms in the database, in combination with the use of a set of drawing tools, it is possible not only to map every single project carried out in the territory of jurisdiction, but also to have a general overview of the archaeological excavation’s outcome. For this reason, a specific section of the system is dedicated to professionals and private society, so that the documentation of their work, compiled in accordance with the given standard, can be directly uploaded in the archives of the Superintendency.

The portal NADIR (Network of Archaeological Research) is developed from the work of the Commission Carandini of 2009 for the SITAN (Sistema Informativo Territoriale Archeologico Nazionale) and aims to build integration between scientific information systems and infrastructure of computer networks, the physical locations and the various functional areas of research that are developed at the national level. It aspires to be a cooperative network of shared work between the different databases spread throughout the country.

The contribution of research in territorial planning involving cultural heritage highlights some scientific questions relative to: 1) territorial diversity as the main factor for managing impacts and effects of the tourism development by offering endogenous and sustainable solutions; 2) the capacity of territories to achieve these goals by means of general directives and common methodologies and procedures; 3) the potential of territorial dimensions to generate a competitive reaction by translating general directives in endogenous place-based strategies and by applying common planning methodology. In particular, this paper discusses issues related to the European NEWCIMED project (New Cities of the Mediterranean Basin, ENPI CBC Med Programme). By adopting an innovative methodological approach named STeMA (Sustainable Territorial environmental/economic Management Approach), the project is realizing sustainable, integrated, strategic and competitive touristic management plans in seven new Mediterranean cities. Respect of local identities, economic growth, social inclusion and employment goals are developed by ex ante and ex post assessment of Cultural Heritage’s territorial potential capital.

This paper illustrates a step in the research that the GISLab (CNR-UNIPA) has been conducting on the development of informative systems for Cultural Heritage. In particular, it shows a methodology used to describe archaeological sites through 3D models integrated with databases. Models are implemented with BIM software. They are made searchable through the connection with a Relational Database Management System and shareable on the web. The case study, analyzed in collaboration with the Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Roma (SSBAR), concerns an application on the Roman structures found in the Crypt of the Church of SS. Sergio e Bacco in Rome. The BIM application we experimented also shows how to use in the archaeological field semantic and parametric solid modeling integrated with 3D standardized and all-inclusive databases that are finally manageable in the public cloud.

Aim of this paper is to introduce the Medieval Forma Urbis project which is part of an agreement between Lazio Region and Tor Vergata University (Rome-Italy). The analysis starts from an assumption: surely, the urban history of ancient and medieval Rome has a wide bibliography with important summaries and several detailed studies related to medieval buildings, by architects and art historians but also by archaeologists. Furthermore, historical far-reaching reviews contained in the recent essay by J.C. Maire Vigueur or in the one by C.J. Wickham apply a stringent use of the archaeological record and material culture. Why then propose a cohesive and, at the same time, detailed study about what remains of medieval Rome? The first observation we can make about all this literature, is that this kind of approach rarely used methods specific to Building Archaeology and, in any case, never when they concern the entire urban area. We believe, instead, that only stratigraphy and typology methodically applied to the reading of historical buildings can allow us to read and unravel the complex palimpsest of the city. The typological and stratigraphic analysis, managed through geo-referenced databases, is then a proper solution to reading the different building phenomena in quantitative diachronic and synchronic terms.

The Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Roma (SSBAR) possesses a notable photographic collection which is highly remarkable because of the variety, quality and quantity of the images (about 500,000 analogical examples on several types of supports). The need to protect negatives, recently recognized as cultural heritage, and their contents, required the digitization of a considerable part of the SSBAR photographic library. An easy searchable digital archive was therefore created, together with the website http://www.fotosar.it finalized to make this whole heritage available to the public. This website was activated in 2002 and continually improved till the current version; it permits the free consultation of the photos, also through excellent features to enlarge details, and their purchase in various formats (low, medium, high density) with different fees set on the basis of the intended use. In addition to the value of the website itself, our hope is that the Fotosar website, holding numerous and valuable images, not only of works of art but also of excavations and archaeological finds, will be able to cooperate with the SITAR system. This cooperation will allow users to access Fotosar contents related to a specific urban area or monument by selecting the corresponding location in the SITAR web map. The future objective is to continue the meritorious cooperation undertaken with the experience of exchange of views and interrelations described above, towards a general harmonization of our work.

Between the Republican and Imperial Age the Aventine Hill was a popular quarter characterized by a huge number of inhabitants and many buildings; later on it became an elegant residential area of the city. The hill was almost abandoned during the Late Antique period, and later, after the construction of oratories and monasteries, it acquired an almost agricultural aspect which did not change until the beginning of the 20th c., when the main construction work was concentrated between the 1930s and 1940s. Starting in 2009, the use of SITAR made it possible to add previous records about various interventions carried out by the main service managers. For the most recent data, like the excavations carried out on the via Marmorata, which brought to light structures built from the 1st to the 8th c. A.D., a chronological type that allows a diachronic vision of the excavations data was used to insert the records in the Archaeological Partitions system.

This paper illustrates some results of rescue excavations carried out during public and private work executed between the third and sixth mile of the ancient Via Flaminia before and beyond the Milvian Bridge. The excavation data are still being studied, while the graphic documentation has already been scanned, georeferenced and vectorized by the SITAR. Due to the nature of the places, the adoption of multiple methods of investigation was required. In addition to the archaeological survey, geo-archaeological drillings and prospections using ERT (Electrical Resistivity Tomography) were undertaken. The findings, arising from the various sites investigated, mainly consist of funerary buildings (like Mausoleums under the Stadio Flaminio and remains of burial chambers under the Villa Flaminia) that escaped demolition of the early 20th century, when the road was involved in an intensive building campaign, which erased it from the city landscape. On the other side of the Tiber, a portion of the ancient Via Flaminia has been unearthed in the area of a gym, Mondofitness, at the fourth mile of the Via Flaminia, and trial excavations in the area of Saxa Rubra brought to light the ruins of a Roman Villa Rustica with a thermal complex.

The III municipality (formerly the IV) of Rome, ever since the 1970’s, has been archaeologically documented in a particularly intensive way by the Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Roma (SSBAR) in collaboration with a range of Italian and foreign scholars and institutes. This has resulted in an invaluable corpus of analogue and digital data archived by the SSBAR that is now being brought together in a single spatial database on protohistoric and Roman to medieval settlement and land use features, called SITAR. In this paper the contributors discuss the genesis, workings and actual state of SITAR, highlighting the cases of the Roman villa complex of Vigna Chiari or ‘di Faonte’ and the protohistoric settlements of Fidenae and Crustumerium, the latter serving as an example of collaboration between SSBAR and a foreign institute, in this particular case the Groningen Institute of Archaeology of the University of Groningen.

The area enclosed within the VIII municipality of Rome is marked by the presence of the ancient Via Appia, which includes extraordinary and widespread archaeological sites and monuments that brought to the establishment of the namesake natural Park (LR 29/97). The synergy between the Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Roma (SSBAR) with SITAR and the territorial Landmarks Departments brought about important results, such as the recognition and identification of archaeological investigations and the set up of devices aimed at the institutional protection of the SSBAR. In 2012 and 2013, a considerable amount of data was added by the SITAR into its GeoDB. This synergy also brought about the set up of technical and thematic maps aimed at territorial protection, preventing unauthorized constructions. As for the application of SITAR in scientific research, this system offers the possibility to analyze, either in a typological and contextual point of view, a huge conglomeration of environmental and anthropogenic data leading to the analysis of several system landscapes in all their aspects. As part of the research project Settlement and spatial dynamics along the ancient Via Appia, between the Suburbium and the city of Rome, the SITAR was fundamental for analyzing the layout and visibility of the burials as expression of social promotion, for building identity and memory.

Recent investigations in the S-W area of the Roman suburbs, from the Via Ostiense and the Via Laurentina until the coastline near Ostia (IX and X municipalities), produced important knowledge that allowed the reconstruction of the complex network of roads, the imperial villas system and the economic reality of this wide territory. The aim of this article is focused on the activity carried on by the SITAR and the consequent important data which has been collected from its implementation, as provided by the recent law on the transparency of the public administration offices.between the Suburbium and the city of Rome, the SITAR was fundamental for analyzing the layout and visibility of the burials as expression of social promotion, for building identity and memory.

This contribution provides an overview of the historical and topographical XI municipality Arvalia Portuense - that is part of the southwestern suburbs of Rome. The dynamics of exploitation of this area are conditioned by the presence of the Tiber river and of important roads such as the ancient Via Campana and Via Portuense. In this paper some sites are presented, which describe the complexity of settlement of the Portuense district, particularly between the archaic and the Republican era, through an analysis of the traces of infrastructures, land use and necropolis. Starting from some sites in which the presence of major emergencies makes the establishment of strategies for the protection of archaeological resources increasingly urgent, the SITAR office started the digitization and cataloguing of archaeological data and the webGIS platform was implemented with the new data. A tool like SITAR, which offers a detailed, easy to update picture of the territory, allows us to steer the archaeological record in the current topographical context and represents a valuable support, useful, on the one hand, to speed up the procedures of data-entry and, on the other to direct the planning of a continuously expanding urban area.

This study describes the most important archaeological finds of the western part of the XIII municipality, dating back from the prehistoric age to the Roman empire. Thanks to the work of surveys and supervision of Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Roma (SSBAR), several protection procedures (like Castel di Guido, Polledrara di Cecanibbio, Cava Esi, Cava Mapi) have been already started. The gradual data capture of all the archaeological finds in the SITAR database is essential for an exhaustive knowledge of the territory in order to organize the conservation activity. At present, the data entry concerns all the findings since 1997 up to the present day; the sites analyzed are streets that testify the presence of the ancient Via Cornelia and Via Aurelia and other secondary roads, aqueducts (Aqua Alsietina), graves and villas of the Roman period. The SITAR system offers the possibility to analyze this data not only from a historic-archaeological point of view, with the study of the ancient settlement’s distribution and evolution, but especially with regards to the modern landscape’s transformation, becoming pivotal areas that the authorities should take into consideration for their conservation.

Thesaurus Project aims at promoting the knowledge of the underwater cultural heritage, ancient and modern, through the application of several typologies of tools: underwater autonomous vehicles, which will be able to explore the sea bottom in teams communicating with each other; a database, which will be useful to store and manage all the information referring to archaeological or historical objects, shipwrecks and sites. This paper aims to explain the logic structure of the database indicating the particular needs of the research, the different typologies of items which have to be managed (archaeological and historical objects; ancient, medieval or modern shipwrecks; underwater sites; written or figurative sources, etc.), the relation with other similar databases and projects. The main task of this part of Thesaurus is to plan and organize an IT system, which will allow archaeologists to describe information in detail, in order to make an efficient managing and retrieving data system available.

Digital maps linked to GIS platforms are extremely effective tools for the knowledge of the archaeological heritage and its management. Currently available GIS cloud is very useful for the remote sharing of archaeological data, because it is able to index and quickly retrieve heterogeneous information from large databases. A cartographic engine embedded in the system makes the cloud more powerful and allows users to share geospatial archaeological data quickly on the web. This is very important in collaborative research projects and for dissemination. The Laboratory of Ancient Topography, Archaeology and Remote Sensing of IBAM CNR is experimenting an open source suite to create a fully working GIS in the cloud system. This suite is composed of different databases (MySQL, postgreSQL, postGIS), a cartographic engine and a web client (QGIS server, QGIS Web Client), and a http server (Apache Web Server), all embedded in the owncloud cloud system. The system is currently being tested for the realization of the digital archaeological maps of the cities of Lecce and Taormina, now in progress in cooperation with the University of Salento and Messina and the Archaeological Superintendence of Apulia Region and Messina Province.

The domus de janas are the typical rock-cut tombs of Sardinian Late Prehistory. Many of them are decorated. Motifs are made with different techniques: painting, sculpture and incision. Architectural elements, busts, cattle and sheep, and horn-shaped features are represented. Painting is generally used to decorate the ceilings, the jambs of doors, walls and false doors. The difficulty of detecting traces of paint complicates the identification of the ancient use of this decorative technique. The aim of this work is to describe the great utility of the plugin DStretch, extension of the ImageJ software, as a method of computer analysis and processing of multispectral images on the paint traces at the sides of the Perdonighéddu domus de janas (Sorgono, NU, Sardinia, Italy). This system opens up new perspectives in the study of the paintings found in the domus de janas, by allowing a crisper image of the decoration, through an alteration of digital photography chromatic scale. The analysis of the images of this grave reveals the presence of traces of painting that decorate the sides of the entrance by forming two doorposts supporting the lintel.

The ALPAGE project is conducted by a large team of archaeologists, historians, geomatics and computer scientists coordinated by Hélène Noizet, totalling about twenty researchers from several laboratories, including the LAMOP, ArScAn, LIENS, L3i as well as IGN-COGIT, IRHT, and the Centre de topographie historique de Paris (National Archives). Together they built a historical GIS, in order to examine the spatial dimension of historical events for the city of Paris. The project began in September 2006, lasted 44 months, and it is now hosted by the TGE Humanum (http://alpage.huma-num.fr/fr/). Through a digital webmapping platform accessible via the Internet, information co-produced by the researchers can be superimposed on present-day spatial data (blocks, parcels, roads, addresses). After presenting the general framework of the project and the application of webmapping tools, the authors illustrate the results coming from the analysis of a database which collects a series of tax records dating back to the period of Philippe le Bel, conducted together with the IRHT-CNRS, and its integration within the ALPAGE GIS platform.

Recently Italian legislation has made some important steps towards openness in the Public Administration. The most important changes come from the recent laws that, among other important innovations, establish for the first time the openness by default of the PA web site contents. Moreover, transparency and openness of sites will become parameters to be considered when evaluating the performances of the employees responsible for them. Probably, the actual application of the laws will be anything but easy: preliminary work will be required, like filtering data that cannot be published to protect copyright or privacy rights of third parties. This paper focuses on data produced or managed by the agencies for Cultural Heritage with emphasis on archaeology: the main limits on opening data and contents will be discussed.

This article is based on the SITAR project experience, which was conducted by the Special Superintendency for Archaeology in Rome. In compliance with recent legislative developments about the open data of the Public Sector, the overall goal of the SITAR project is to propose a way to publish the archaeological data on the web, combining the protection of intellectual property rights and the necessity of sharing of information. Some archaeological data, indeed, must be considered as public data and must be shared with licenses that allow their use for research and learning, as well as the development of preventive archaeology. This paper presents a summary of the topics related to the dissemination of archaeological data, with special attention to unpublished data and to the rights related to their publication, in relation with both the protection of intellectual property rights of field archaeologists and scientific directors and the use of proper licenses.

RAPTOR is a project, still under development, designed to build an easy and versatile tool in order to computerize the administrative procedures of the Italian Superintendencies for Archaeological Heritage. Its purpose is to ensure a faster response to any kind of external request and to align, as much as possible, the Superintendency offices to the new Code of Digital Administration. RAPTOR geo-database is based on open source software PostgreSQL and PostGIS, while the web-interface management is provided by PHP, JavaScript, GeoServer and OpenLayers. In this way all vector data can be entered into the system through specific compilation forms and displayed on a map, where they can also be queried. In short, RAPTOR will provide the users a complete and accurate mapping module, which will be able to show in real time a thematic cartography both with known archaeological evidence and negative areas.

The development of the SITAR project took place in a time of new approaches in the management and use of archaeological geospatial data, even at the higher central levels of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage (MiBAC). SITAR represents an important technological and institutional challenge for the Special Superintendency for Archaeology in Rome, the governmental institution in charge of the safeguarding and exploitation of the Roman archaeological heritage. The aim of the SITAR project is the construction of the Archaeological Territorial Informative System of Rome for the management of the enormous and heterogeneous amount of data and for the multi-dimensional representation of the valuable historical context of a constantly evolving city like Rome. After a first phase of conceptual analysis, data model definition and taxonomic structures description, currently the technological development is focused on the SITAR project web platform and more specifically on the webGIS. The paper discusses the use of basic GIS functions integrated with specific tools for dynamic dataset multi-representation and web editing. These implementations allow all the users, both scholars and archaeology amateurs, to build their own new geospatial information; users now play an actual role in the system and in the enrichment of collective knowledge.

The SITAR project, designed to implement the GIS Archaeology of Rome, was started in 2007 by the Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Roma (SSBAR). The starting point for the SITAR project was the SSBAR requirement to digitize and manage a large quantity of administrative and scientific data concerning Cultural Heritage. This project was developed at a crucial point in which the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities was rethinking the Territorial Information System, the data standardization and data sharing system used in the past decades. It was the input to the new institutional Open Approach. This aspect is apparent in the proposed SITAR data model, whose linearity is applied in the same basic logical levels already identified and well-structured information architecture of the System and those that will be tested. The additional advantage of SITAR is precisely the possibility of splitting archaeological knowledge into these core levels and reassembling it under the guidance of those who have the tools and scientific knowledge to do so. The SSBAR aspires to the creation of an archaeological ‘cadastre’ of Rome which is an approved and certified basis created according to information on legal and administrative aspects of archaeological science. In addition, the comparison with other institutions actively engaged in testing new multimedia technologies applied to cultural heritage has encouraged the evolution of SITAR to 3D data modeling and the development of procedures to test the archaeological potential.

RAPTOR is a project, still under development, designed to build a simple and versatile tool in order to computerize the administrative procedures of the Italian Superintendence for Archaeological Heritage. Its purpose is to ensure a faster response to all kinds of external requests and to align, as much as possible, the Superintendency offices to the new Code of Digital Administration (CAD). RAPTOR geodatabase is based on open source software PostgreSQL and PostGIS, while the web-interface management is provided by PHP, JavaScript, GeoServer and OpenLayers. In this way all vector data can be entered into the system through specific compilation forms and displayed on a map, where they can also be queried. In short, RAPTOR will provide the users a complete and accurate mapping module, which will be able to show in real time a thematic cartography provided both with known archaeological evidence and negative areas.

Since 2003 when the Archaeological Unit City of Lyon (SAVL) was appointed by the French Ministry of Culture as a preventive archaeological operator, the increase inactivity revealed the need for a standardized in field recording tool. In the meantime, the state archaeological services required the different operators to adopt an extreme degree of homogeneity in the final excavation reports, in order to improve the long term management plan of the archaeological artifacts. This double evolution drove the SAVL to adopt an operating system development from the field to the final report process built on the ‘ALyAS’ GIS (Archéologie Lyonnaise et Analyse Spatiale). This system, enhanced as an additional tool for the French institutional GIS ‘Patriarche’, proceeds, with the overall results, from the archaeological fact scale to the topographic mapping feature. To the original database core (archaeological data, referenced documents and ancient map recordings) an extension module focusing on in field recording is added. The ongoing purpose of these tools is to connect the field recording results to GIS final processing. This approach links the immediate targets of preventive archaeology (reports) to the archaeological data management involved in a long lasting territorially applied GIS system. In the near future, some extensions should also respond to the institutional request, and each time become more refined, particularly when compiling archaeological artifacts recording the final archaeological reports.

In cooperation with the French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, the GIS Center of the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt has undertaken the creation of an archaeological map of the West Bank of Thebes in order to supply the Egyptian authorities with a tool for the management and the development of this rich archaeological area. The relevant documentation for the mapping process, because of its abundance and disparity, requires the establishment of a unified documentation system using jointly GIS and databases. Besides the production of thematic maps, this tool opens new horizons, both in terms of processing and analysis and in terms of sharing and publication of data relevant to the knowledge of the cultural heritage of Thebes.

General principles of recording data in archaeology, developed and consolidated during the past thirty years have spawned a multiplicity of conceptual models and robust software solutions. Inrap, as the main actor at the national level, must foster the harmonization of different approaches to the recording of data in order to improve methods of collecting and sharing data. The paper shows the different solutions and main tools for data capture being applied by the excavation team managers of the Institute, considering the particularities of these tools such as origin, method, type of field, and scientific questioning. Moreover, the adjustments to which these tools are being subjected in order to fit different situations are presented. The focus is on an ongoing project to establish progressive convergence among the possible approaches, including the promotion of the development of a conceptual platform shared with the Ministry of Culture, which would allow a 'branding' of various databases. The use of a standard like the CIDOC-CRM, the international standard of reference for the exchange of information on cultural heritage, could serve as a reference.

The design and progressive implementation of an Archaeological Information System (AIS) at Inrap aims to meet the needs for improving archaeological reasoning as well as regulatory requirements. The term of AIS means here a coherent and organized set of resources (people, data, methods, processes, hardware, software, etc.) to acquire, organize, store, manage, analyze, and publish relevant archaeological information from various forms and sources. The overall objective is to enable Inrap to get consistent and harmonized archaeological information of known quality and managed according to interoperability. This project utilizes several studies and real situation experiments among which those produced for GIS in collaboration with CNRS and University F. Rabelais of Tours (UMR 6173 CITERES).

The purpose of the project led at the present time by the sub-direction of archaeology (Ministère de la Culture) is to organize the data transmission under IT format from one actor to another in the archaeological process of artifact management and documentation. This would mean that the diverse actors involved - regional services of the archaeology, department of the underwater and submarine archaeological researches, operators, administrators of preservation and studies centers, excavation warehouses, or museums agents responsible for archaeological collections - would not be obliged to collect this information again on their own computer systems, during the relay passage between actors.

This study deals with the impact of the Geographical Information Systems (GIS) on the French institutions for archaeological research. The practices of GIS follow a global evolution. With the dematerialization of the data and the systems, we are actually in a process which proposes new modes of data management and new working processes. On the occasion of a PhD research at the University of Paris Ouest-Nanterre, we conducted an examination of projects drawn from various contexts of French archaeology: archaeological services of regions with a measure of autonomy, national institute of preventive archaeological research (Inrap), Ministry of Cultural Heritage, University and institutes of research. It gave us the opportunity to analyze the peculiarities and durability of the practices connected to GIS. This double initiative shows us the relevance of questioning the format techniques and the methods by which their tools are implemented, in order to take into account the specificities of the technology and the differences in rationalities and perceptions of the archaeologists. It highlights the strategic aspect of mutualization and sharing of equipment, data and skills.

This article is intended as a review of the contact points between information technologies and cultural heritage, starting from the classification and cataloguing methods applied both to scientific and historical research. The Author describes the aims, activities and results obtained by the Archaeological Superintendencies in Campania from the most important projects developed between 1987 and 2010. In these projects, thanks to the cooperation with private and other public institutions involved in ICT, specific patterns and models of cataloguing and territorial information systems were created related to the domain of cultural heritage, including databases and information retrieval, GIS and CMS applied to cataloguing objects and settlements, web sites and cooperative and distributed web systems for cultural contents dissemination. The Author analyses the various methods and purposes of the applications conducted for studying, safeguarding and promoting the historical and archaeological heritage, in order to define the phases of this technological development and outline the mutual influences and benefits for these different but increasingly interconnected fields of research.

The creation of a homogeneous and normalized database with a 3D viewer is the ultimate aim of a project that was created to meet the needs of the archaeological, academic and scientific community, but also of the less specialized public. Benefiting from computer innovation and virtual reality, with increasingly "real" and intuitive interfaces, only improves the accessibility and comprehension of archaeological studies. Thus, interactive databases, used scientifically and for the dissemination of culture and information, will promote the importance of sites. VisArq. 1.0 offers precisely this, a visualization of archaeological information of the province of Zaragoza (Spain) and a protocol of action which, in its first version, attempts to offer a modus operandi, in which the standardization, unification, and display of data is the ultimate aim.

Compared with other objects of our cultural heritage, the various construction remains that belong to the ancient architectural heritage are generally associated with the most challenging problems with respect to their preservation. Difficulties and problems become unpaired when the ancient heritage is the assembly of several monumental constructions, as in the case of the imperial complex constructed by Adriano in Tivoli, known as Hadrian’s Villa. Under these circumstances, any risk analysis and subsequent study of preservation measures will require a two stage approach. In the first stage, a detailed knowledge of each single element or structure within the complex must be acquired. In the second stage the available knowledge pertaining to the various monuments must be combined and the entire complex combining the single architectural artifacts into a monumental unity must be re-examined with respect to its original status and its historical modifications. Hence a great wealth of information and a profound knowledge have been acquired on several monuments in this complex. Therefore, it is now possible to propose sound hypotheses on each one of these architectural artifacts as well as to propose an interactive data system for risk analyses and risk assessment with respect to the preservation of the complex. Taking the opportunity of the "Risk assessment map of the cultural heritage" compiled by the Central Institute for Restoration (ISCR), a research project was undertaken to develop an analysis model of the villa which would allow an estimation of the global risk of the various ancient structures. This project is based on the use of a GIS to develop a matrix of risk indexes as well as a database grouping all available information on the single monument. The development of this system will make it possible to cross reference the data acquired within the various fields of investigation involved in the survey phase, the preservation phase and the restoration process of each monumental unit and the complex as a whole.

The subject of this paper is the representation of archaeological data at Pompeii by using GIS technology. The evolution of the original basic pattern of many domestic spaces (cubicula or entire dwellings) from the Samnite period to AD 79 in Regiones V (insulae V,3 and V,4) and VI (insulae VI,7 and VI,14) let us understand that they were transformed by adapting to the changes that occurred during the history of the ancient site, where building activities intensely affected the urban arrangement until the final destruction of the city in AD 79. Spatial analyses and predictive models, performed by combining excavation data and architectural studies, provide a very wide and complex range of information, such as layers of chronological phases or patterns of distribution trends, as well as 3D modeling to obtain precise and realistic 3D representations of wall-structures and the terrain (DTM). In this case study, GIS helps us understand the formation process of archaeological stratigraphy which is a result of the changes which took place during the history of the ancient site. Very different from the usual approach of intra-site GIS for archaeological excavations, this type of analysis arises from a broader perspective of the ancient urban landscape and of all those features useful for the spatial and conceptual definition of "neighbourhoods" in relation to the street network, as parsed through geoprocessing functions. The analysis conducted confirms that the distribution of architectural spaces and the evolution of the urban landscape in these city-blocks imply a close relationship with social and economic pressures. It is important to stress the value of a GIS integrated approach in the process of interpretation of an archaeological context, especially in terms of accuracy and of usability of the results for the management of a Cultural Heritage resource.

This paper illustrates a research project aimed at testing a method of GIS-based evaluation which was conducted using specific criteria and an "objective point of view" during an archaeological impact assessment. The authors tested the use of a database, linked to a GIS platform, to assign fixed values in order to evaluate the "potential", the "value of the context" and the "risk" of single archaeological sites affected by new projects of urban development. Based on the application of the same methodology and language used by the scholars involved in the environmental impact studies and coming from other scientific fields (natural sciences, economics, etc.), the assessment idea is proposed in order to stimulate archaeologists to use not only qualitative, but also quantitative values, like the procedures for the environmental impact assessment. Some case studies relative to the Venetian Lagoon, Mestre and Comacchio (FE) conclude the paper.

Review article.

In 1999 the Museum Service of the Lazio Region, together with the firm Andromeda, set up a database for the archaeological finds in the municipal museums in the region. The project, called IDRA, was created for the purpose of locating and quantifying the archaeological material in each museum. Designed as a client/server system with an SQL engine, IDRA software combines the philosophy of relational databases with object-oriented structures, where the information is organized hierarchically. At this time the database consists of around 17,000 files - provided with digital images and referring to 50 different museums - that are now available on the Culture Portal of the Lazio Region (http://www.culturalazio.it/site/it-IT/Argomenti/Banche_dati_online/). A tentative model used to locate both museums and finding sites through Google Maps has also been made. On the basis of specific agreements with the Ministry of Culture and the Municipality of Rome a project was initiated for a shared consultation of databases pertinent to different authorities as well as for a common investigation about structured terminology lists. To this aim we have conducted a standardization of terminology related to the entry “Object Definition”, and developed a list of about 500 terms. In the present article we have focused on some of the issues that emerged during our work in order to submit them to public discussion. We deal, for instance, with how to define the state of preservation of the object in relation to its definition; whether and how to use diminutives; how to structure the categories of material so as to define the finds for optimal searching; and how to file objects reused at a later period.

The Cultural Heritage Map of Apulia, started in September 2007, is a mapping project carried out by the Regional Department of Land Management (Apulia, Italy) in collaboration with the Regional Department for Cultural Heritage, the four Regional Universities of Apulia and the Regional Central Department for Cultural and Environmental Heritage. The project aim is to create a thematic cartography in order to archive, map and describe in detail the Cultural Heritage of the territory of Apulia, superseding the traditional method of cataloguing based on a concept of Cultural Heritage as spots on a map. The other main purpose of the project is to analyze and describe the stratified historical landscapes of the regional countryside, from prehistory up to now, as long-term evidence of the identity of people and places. These aims have been achieved combining different disciplines and methodologies and a geo-database which is part of the Apulia Region GIS organized in different themes and informative layers. This is intended to be an innovative and dynamic instrument for Cultural Heritage preservation and it is expected that conformity with the Cultural Heritage Map of Apulia will be the necessary requirement for the approval of every land-planning activity in order to preserve the local Cultural Heritage.

Archaeological Predictive Models (APMs) represent an important evolution of spatial integrated databases of archaeological records. Before the development and the analysis of a predictive model, numerous other steps are required in order to integrate the raw data sets into functional archaeological systems. Our aim is to assess the evolution of archaeological data sets into APMs and to reconsider the real value of such attempts for the Romanian Heritage Protection or for scientific purposes. We will consider, as well, certain aspects regarding the deductive/inductive nature of the APMs. In our perspective, there are a few ways APMs could be improved: the use of more variables, as well as the understanding both of the analytical nature of data sets and of the real nature of archaeological data sets.

Without accurate and high quality land mapping it is very difficult for the Public Administration to manage archaeological property in the way it should be. In this paper we describe some experiments conducted in the Sardinia Region where an increased use of open source software is strongly recommended in the rules which refer to the integration of land planning into town planning, in which an interaction with archaeological features is required.

The Superintendency for Cultural Heritage and Activities of the Autonomous Region of Aosta Valley (Italy), has recently created a new concept information system for the ordinary management of the archaeological and related documental patrimony. ArcheoTRAC is a multi-contextual and interdisciplinary methodological tool, envisioned by field experts to promote and simplify the daily management and recording activity. The system proposes a new and alternative approach which “excludes” cataloguing as a first step in the recording process. Its main aim is to identify every archaeological entity and track its life-cycle. ArcheoTRAC is an open source web application, UMTS/HSDPA and Wi-Fi, which can be supported by different combined technologies as bar code, RFId and control access. This paper discusses the management conceptual model and its innovative methodological approach, the use of which can be greatly expanded by resorting to the open source.

The IS discussed here deals with the issues of collecting, organizing and sharing all the information about a find, whether a mobile one or a site, as soon as it is discovered. This kind of information is often considered as individual knowledge or totally unmanaged. The choice of OS platforms enables us to disseminate the solution.

The «Sistema Informativo Territoriale Archeologico di Parma» is a project promoted by the National Archaeological Museum of Parma in partnership with the «Centro di Geotecnologie» of the University of Siena, the municipality of Parma and the «Compagnia Generale di Ripreseaeree». The aim of the project was to create an archaeological resource management GIS, which would be useful both to archaeologists and to the municipality for city planning. The GIS was built with ESRI ArcInfo. The relational structure of its geo-database, managed with ArcCatalog, permits the use of a data model based on separate tables for the attributes of archaeological sites, associated archaeological investigations, and the data that constitutes the archive of the sites. The attribute tables are linked directly to spatial objects and base maps managed in ArcMap and provide the essential spatial search and query needed to manage the data effectively. The system is based on the 1:5.000 Regional Technical Map, that provides a spatial framework and information about roads, properties and administrative boundaries; it is integrated with aerial photographs and historical charts. This GIS consists of a spatial object that defines the location and/or boundaries of a broad range of data, from prehistoric sites to larger Roman and medieval structures. The associated attribute information for each of those sites is defined by the default thesauri, i.e. lists of preferred terms for describing types of archaeological sites. In the first step the study had concerned the old town centre of Parma; at this time the GIS holds nearly 400 archaeological sites and provides the main source of information about the archaeological excavations in the city. Some thematic maps of Parma have been created including a distribution map, chronological maps, an archaeological potential map. In the next phase the project will be extended to the whole municipal territory.

The authors deal with the problem of a standardised but clear and easily understood framework for the strategic decisions involved in the selection among the diverse projects for the conservation and cultural and economic enhancement of archaeological sites. The aim of the paper is to explore the possibility of the use of fuzzy logic to create a hierarchy among the different projects. We propose the use of fuzzy numbers mathematics for the joint treatment of technical, landscape impact, economic and humanistic aspects in selecting the best conservation projects. The basic elements for the definition and the arithmetic of fuzzy numbers are given and a procedure based on the ordering is implemented. Finally, an application relating to an archaeological site on the Mediterranean Sea (Nora, Sardinia) is presented.

The use of third-party data is becoming an increasingly important part of archaeological research but there has been little critical analysis of such data sets, or their use. This paper highlights both the challenges and benefits of third-party data through discussion of the experiences of the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project Viking and Anglo-Saxon Landscape and Economy. It shows that the background organisation and intended audience of third-party data set can greatly affect how the data is collated and presented, and the enhancement of such resources for particular research aims may be labour intensive and time consuming, and should not be underestimated. However, it is argued that the usefulness of third-party data sets outweighs any potential problems which may be encountered, but that there needs to be recognition of these challenges and appropriate training provided for future archaeologists.

Digital technologies developed during the last decades substantially change the processes of accumulation, custody, record and investigation of cultural heritage as well as the processes of spread of information on cultural heritage. Basic features of current situation of digitalization of Lithuanian cultural heritage are: a) willingness of most institutions to digitalize the data they have; b) financial problems of digitalization; c) absence of national strategy; d) low level of inter-institutional collaboration; e) low level of standardization. Taking into account the last three features we can forecast that sooner or later (if the situation does not change) Lithuanian digital information systems of cultural heritage will be confronted with the problem of usage efficiency. Perhaps the most important parameters characterizing cultural heritage are historical space and historical time. But we do not have any wider systems of presentation and classification of historical space and time designed for digitalization of cultural heritage in Lithuania. Object of this article is the models of historical geography and historical chronology applied in the digitalization of cultural heritage. Aim of the article is the presentation and substantiation of the model of a space and time thesaurus (standard) of Lithuanian systems of digitalization of cultural heritage. The basic aims of such a thesaurus are the following: 1) creation of a universal method of presentation of historical space and time in digital environment; 2) consolidation of a general scheme (standard) of periodization and historical geography (to put on end to disputes among the specialists on this subject); 3) standardization of space and time presentation in digital environment; 4) organization of management of digital information of cultural heritage; 5) geographical and chronological classification of the objects of cultural heritage; 6) integration of all historical geographical data in a single system that becomes a form of digital cultural heritage; 7) digitalization of the data of different objects of cultural heritage in single and integral form; 8) analysis and dating of information of the objects of cultural heritage; 9) creation of schemes of cultural development.

The Central Institute for Cataloguing and Documentation (ICCD), a body of the Ministry of Cultural Resources and Activities that handles the cataloguing and documentation of Italy's cultural heritage, recently concluded the project undertaken for the creation of the General Cataloguing Information System (SIGEC), an effort focused on making possible the integrated management of the different types of information - alpha-numeric, multimedia, geographic - available on the resources. An especially interesting aspect of the SIGEC, and one of its strengths, is the possibility of cross-referencing the informative data on the resources to their home territory, revealing the logical, historical and spatial relations between the environmental and anthropogenic elements, as well as the other entities of cultural interest, found in a given geographic setting. The result is an improved and better informed knowledge of the resources in question, which are placed in their proper context of time and space. While these considerations are valid for all types of cultural resources, they are especially pertinent to the archaeological heritage, which, as tangible evidence of past civilisations, takes on particular value and meaning at the precise moment in which it is placed in the historical and territorial context in which it originated and existed. The complexity and variety of the cultural resources have made it necessary to formulate specific technological and cataloguing tools with which, under the SIGEC, the geographic data generated by the customary GIS instruments is correlated with the descriptive information obtained on the resources, as well as with the sum total of the relevant documentation (graphic materials, images, multimedia pieces). In the specific case of archaeological resources, both the measures currently in force and those being updated or drawn up for the first time have been supplemented with the core information necessary for the application of the functions of the system. In addition, the cataloguing standards have been reformulated, creating a multifaceted structure in which the chart for the Archaeological Site (SI) serves as the historical-territorial reference framework for the other types of charts (SAS, Stratigraphic Survey; MA-CA, Archaeological Monument - Archaeological Complex; RA, Archaeological Artefact; NU, Numismatics; TMA, Table of Materials), making it possible to determine the space-time context of the resources described therein.

Europe is a very old and very small continent. The accession of ten new states to the EU in spring 2004 reminds us that the political boundaries we police and survey would have made little sense to the ancient populations who moved freely across our frontiers. Our disparate national and local heritage services represent different traditions and experiences of researching, recording, presenting and managing what should be among our principal assets. This diversity risks undermines research and conservation, it inhibits international strategies for heritage management and institutionalises anachronism. Can information technologies support the EU's stated aim of creating a single European research area for archaeology? This paper investigates the long-standing question of how different archaeological data sets in different parts of Europe may be aligned more closely to support research learning and teaching. It identifies emerging technologies to for resource discovery, integration and delivery, placing these in the context of organisational evolution. It asks how these organisations and technologies might work together to support archaeological information at a continental scale.

This article discusses the criteria and methodology applied for the insertion and later development of the archaeological terminology into the Andalusian Thesaurus of the Historical Heritage (TAPH), published in 1998. Firstly, the background and precedents that gave way to the creation of such documentation language are dealt with. Secondly, we comment upon the problems encountered in the integration of the archaeological vocabulary within a thesaurus that comprises several other heritage-related disciplines such as Architecture, Ethnology or Art History. Thirdly, the significance of the TAPH five years after its publication is evaluated, with a special emphasis in the process of its implementation and computerisation within the Information System of the Andalusian Historical Heritage.

In 1998 the Museums Service of the Lazio Region began a project to set up a database for the archaeological finds ('RA' files) preserved in the museums of this area. The intention was to provide a simple means for locating and quantifying the finds preserved in each museum for the use of museum directors, regional offices and any external users. A management software programme - IDRA, developed by the firm Andromeda - was chosen with this in mind. Data structuring and normalisation methods to reach the necessary level of standardisation were defined during a series of meetings between archaeologists. These meetings produced a proposal for regulations in addition to those drawn up by ICCD in 1992, also including a section devoted to faunal remains from archaeological sites. The software was configured, with suitable adaptation and integration, on the basis of the specific requirements that emerged during the work. It was also designed to combine scientific correctness, data normalisation and compliance with national cataloguing rules, as well as being a functional and easy-to-use application. IDRA is designed as a client/server system with an SQL engine. As regards the database organisation, the system combines the philosophy of relational databases with object-oriented structures, in which the information is organised hierarchically. This enables data to be associated logically and permits the description of complex structures, such as those relative to the archaeological objects in question. Since it was felt that the use of a 'stand-alone' software would render much of the efforts towards the normalisation and definition of terminology lists useless, a databank sharing system will be introduced, with centralised 'management' in regional offices and diverse access levels for users. Today the database consists of about 10,000 files for 27 museums, soon to be completed with the relevant digital images. An assessment of this initial stage is currently a priority, also by means of comparison with other databases for a more accurate and selective compilation of terminology lists, while another priority is the experimentation of network connections for database sharing with each individual museum.

Cultural resource management (CRM) work in the United States has recently produced vast amounts of data that are now being assembled in large databases. Thus, the potential has grown for useful site location models in support of heritage conservation. As Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have become more powerful, they have become more useful to archaeologists. The realm of archaeological predictive modeling has grown to include at least three types of models that focus either on site-prospection, on understanding ancient ways of life, or on decision-support for cultural resource managers. Decision-support modelling seems to have the greatest near-term potential as a useful modelling tool. However, there are also significant methodological and theoretical issues yet to be resolved before such tools can be widely used. An example of an archaeological site location model currently in development illustrates the potential of decision-support modeling. Some of the problems inherent in site-prospection and ancient-behavior analysis can be avoided in models designed as decision-support tools.

A contribution to archaeological resource management. Ghent University has organised an archaeological aerial survey of both provinces of East- and West-Flanders since the beginning of the 1980s. As a result of these activities, some 50,000 photographs have been captured. They reveal thousands of archaeological structures, from the Neolithic through to the most recent periods. Since 1997, financial support has been received from the Flemish Community aimed at the realisation of a GIS based database (Access 97 relational database - Arcview 3.1) and the digitalization of some 50% of the photographs. As a result, it was possible to locate all 50,000 images and connect them with geographical information offered by the support centre GIS Flanders. It is expected in the near future that this information will be available for SMR-purposes and archaeological heritage management. There are also several scientific outputs: one of them is the study of Bronze Age barrows.

Archaeologists working in cultural resource management (CRM) face four major challenges. First, the work is performed under short, development-driven deadlines. Second, CRM projects often are quite large, generating more data than archaeologists traditionally encounter. Third, the results must be presented in forms that are understandable and enlighten the public. Finally, CRM archaeology must address concerns of native peoples. In this paper, I draw on case studies from the American Southwest to show how archaeologists at Statistical Research, Inc. have used the Internet and CD-ROM technology to address these challenges. I highlight a web-based system developed for a large excavation project designed to keep project sponsors, principals, and specialists from around the world abreast of the status of fieldwork and analyses, as well as a forum for dialogue. I also discuss the use of CD-ROM technology to disseminate project materials and reports in a cost-effective manner. Beyond text, these CDs include videos designed for a non professional audience. CD-ROM technology also is used to provide Native Americans with digital images of rock art and sacred sites that allows them to comment on proposed mitigation measures.

The application of Viewshed analysis techniques to the study of archaeological landscapes, through the medium of a GIS, is a field of research that has a long pedigree. However, it is noticable that studies have focused particularly on the prehistoric and Roman periods, with little application within the area of medieval studies. This paper aims to explore the potentials that different forms of spatial analysis offer, with particular emphasis on visibility in relation to medieval landscape research. A further dimension that is explored within this framework is the use of spatial analysis techniques as a tool for aiding the management of cultural heritage. The study forms part of an on-going research program on the Isle of Wight, being conducted by the Department of Archaeology, University of Southampton, with the aim of understanding the medieval settlement and agriculture on the island. Investigations have been conducted on a range of sites, varying from Deserted Medieval Villages to the Cistercian Abbey of Quarr. The initial results of this research indicated a strong pattern of movement of people to and from the island, a probable result of the strategic military importance the island had during the Middle Ages. Therefore, in collaboration with the Isle of Wight County Council Archaeological Unit, an investigation was launched into the effectiveness of the medieval beacon signalling system on the island, in order to appraise its success, the choice of positioning and the identification of sites. The results collected through the application of Cumulative Viewshed Analysis were then tested for their statistical significance in order to fullfill the CRM aspect of this research.

For CRM the use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) is mainly related to the possibility of integrating archaeological data into territorial and town planning. The value of predictive models based on the construction of geo-environmental patterns has only recently been recognised. Spatial technologies have opened a whole new set of possibilities for the management of cultural resources, and the contribution of information technology to archaeological investigation makes it possible to reinterpret this protective action not only as a simple defence of the archaeological site, but as a dynamic exploitation and integration of the archaeological heritage into the territorial and town design. In Italy the diffusion of GIS at the inter-site level has been accompanied by the introduction of the concept of archaeological risk. This term has often been used incorrectly. In fact, it is more correct to refer to archaeological impact maps (AIM), borrowing the term from the Italian regulations governing the evaluation of environmental impact (VIA). An investigation based on the level of distribution of geographical information systems in Italian Public Administration has called attention to the increasing importance of GIS in urban planning. In the near future therefore, GIS will acquire a more strategic role, acting as a link and guaranteeing communication between policy makers and archaeologists. This paper examines the experience of an actual process of analysis and design of a GIS, designed for the management of cultural heritage. In particular, the aim is to offer operational and methodological guidelines for the development of the data models applied, in this specific case, to the analysis of the necropolis of Pontecagnano, an Etruscan-Campanian centre lying about 70 kilometres south of Naples. The system has been adjusted to the needs of different types of users: on the one hand, scientists interested in the reconstruction of the social, economic and cultural organisation of the ancient community, and on the other, operators involved in the preservation of cultural heritage through the promotion of a careful policy of development which would integrate the archaeological patrimony into urban planning.

GeoARQUEOS is a programme designed with Avenue and Crystal Reports for the purpose of keeping the digital cartography of the Andalusian Archaeological Heritage updated. Its three basic functions may be summarised as follows: a) Automatic elaboration of digital coverages and data models using the information available in the Andalusian Archaeological Heritage Database (DatARQUEOS); b) Detection of geo-referencing errors in the resulting coverage (archaeological sites outside of their municipality boundaries and evident errors in the assignment of coordinates); c) Automatic comparisons between new and previous coverages, in order to offer information about the new, cancelled or modified archaeological sites in the new coverage. The GeoARQUEOS programme represents a considerable improvement in the handling of information related to the Andalusian Archaeological Heritage. This progress has been possible mainly because it acts as a means of quality control for the data by minimising the number of errors which escape manual filtering when information is stored in the system.

Until recently the preservation of the library heritage has been a very difficult task: conservation policies have been mainly interested in undertaking urgent restoration measures without carrying out prevention measures. Indeed, an effective conservation policy must be followed in order to ensure all protective measures are undertaken for the removal of dangers and for the insurance of a suitable environment. In this way, restoration measures, that represent a traumatic event for a work of art, could be avoided. Therefore it is highlighted the need to create a “risk map” for library heritage. This risk map should be a tool capable of selecting instruments for conservation, restoration and preservation and allowing a correct choice both for objectives and methodologies and the limitations of the essential measures. The risk map will be able: to give extensive answers to a number of key questions for the setting up of conservation policies; to give advice for the better planning of conservation and restoration measures; to help deciding between a routine measure or special maintenance, control and monitoring of typical situations; to manage economic resources without wasting of public and private money.

In the Archaeological Institute of the Dodecanese, the need for establishing an information system has been evident for many years. The Est expansion in personal computing systems and the development of GÌS during the fast years have provided the possibility of its realisation. Three major projects are under development. The first covers the monuments on the whole island of Rhodes, the second deals with the Ancient City of Rhodes and the third examines the Old Town of Rhodes as a living monument. Experiments with digital editing of photographs have provided us with a useful tool in presenting archaeological information. Computer aided design is occasionally used in case studies of monuments. The digital information system itself, with all restrictions due to hardware and software limitations, encourages, in a way, a more clearly defined and better organised data collection procedure. The transformation of a non-computerised to a computer-supported institution is a long procedure. Data input has always been a major difficulty. Due to this fact the full potential of the information system has never been realised. The system depends highly on the continuous data import and information updating and, as such, its accuracy and usefulness are highly vulnerable.

DELTOS II is an information system covering the needs for documentation, conservation and administration of site monuments and preserved buildings. It offers map display, supports large data volume, storage and display of multimedia data (mostly images and free text) and drawing facilities. DELTOS has been developed by the Institute of Computer Science, FORTH, in dose collaboration with the 23rd Ephorate of Classical and Prehistoric Antiquities and the l3th Ephorate of Byzantine and Postbyzantine Antiquities. The system has been installed at the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion, Crete, Greece and is currently in the initial stage of exploitation.

The Israel Antiquities authority, established in 1990, is responsible for over 25,000 archaeological sites in Israel. Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem is the headquarters of the Israel Antiquities authority (IAA). The IAA began its computerization program in 1991. In 1991 there were a total of five XT computers throughout the IAA al lowing it to facilitate an integrated system between the database used by archaeologists in the field and the database in the central computer of the Rockefeller Museum. Excavator 2001, the database used by archaeologists in the field, is built on a FoxPro database. The database of the central computer is known as the Antiquity System and is built on a Oracle database. In the final analysis our aim is to create a national database consisting of the vast material and objects obtained by hundreds of archaeologists working in the field. In addition to the artifacts and data which are currently being processed and integrated into the new system, we are also in the process of cataloguing hundreds of thousands of artefacts which are discovered and stored prior to the development of the national database system.

The author illustrates the activity of Istituto Beni Culturali (IBC), the cultural institution of Regione Emilia Romagna with regard to the use of new technology in cultural heritage. IBC, a unique example in Italy, has created in 1990 a public company to manage the public resources and to coordinate the computerized cataloguing of the regional cultural heritage: the Centro Regionale per il Catalogo (CRC). Since 1993 IBC administers a regional museum fund (L.R. 20/90) and holds a major role in programming the regional policy in the field of local authority museums and cataloguing of museum objects. The Documentation Centre of IBC has elaborated the guidelines for recording information about objects preserved in local museum: our main aim is to provide every museum with a system to perform some essential activities; administration and cataloguing over all. As regards to cataloguing rules we follow the ICCD directives (precataloguing cards) in order to create a regional archive of cultural heritage conserved in museums. As regards software we have chosen an information retrieval system, Odysseus, very flexible and developed in a modular way. Actually Odysseus is used to catalogue museum cultural heritage, to realize data bases for the Internet and to realize archaeological maps.

S.I.R.Be.C. is a multimedia project of Regione Lombardia. It began in 1993 and it is now carried out with the collaboration of twenty four museums, eleven Provinces and seven Dioceses. By the year 2000, the project aims at establishing: - a computerized inventory (data and images) of Lombardy's cultural property; - a regional information system of Lombardy's cultural property, consisting of a central multimedia data base, a regional computer network and a regional documentation centre; - a coordinate network of the documentation centres and the data bases belonging to museums, to public and private institutions and to the Church. S.I.R.Be.C. cooperates with the National Ministry for Cultural Property - Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione I.C.C.D. and with police units aimed at repressing illicit traffic in cultural property.

Francesco Gnecchi was one of the most important Roman coin collectors between the XIX and XX Century. His collection, consisting of about 20,000 pieces, was purchased in 1923 without any related document. In 1933 the epistular archive owned by one of the Gnecchi heires was found. The study of the archive allows us to have important information concerning the purchase of pieces and, consequently, their origin. To make possible a systematic analysis, the archive has been stored with a scanner on a computer system and an appropriate retrieval program has been developed.

The project, carried out under the scientific direction of the Istituto di Studi Liguri and the Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione, is aimed at the study of 250 archaeological sites located in the coastline facing the Calabria, Sicilia, Basilicata, Abruzzo, Molise, Marche e Puglia regions. This area offers an homogeneous archaeological context, characterised by itineraries of both commercial and military traffic, which gave rise to trade and settlement phenomena. The research activity involves, for each site, field studies as well as filing and documentation. The project requires also the creation of a database, containing not only alphanumeric but also cartographic data and images. The filing is conformed to the rules established by the Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione.

The present database was established during the special photographic and documentation survey of the Pompei archaeological area. This survey, promoted and realized by the Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione, began in 1977 and until 1981 produced about 25,000 black and white photographs of paintings, floors and objects still in situ, and in the last years, about 4000 colour photographs. The database, initially devoted only to specialised users, contains the alphanumerical files relevant to this photographic survey, and is aimed in primis at the retrieval of images. In order to render the database accessible to a wider public, the programme needed an up-dating, which has been inserted in a more ambitious project, aimed at the creation of a CD-Rom containing the alphanumeric database and a good number of images.

The ARGOS (Archaelogical Greek On-line System) Project proposes to create the most comprehensive bibliography on ancient Mediterranean civilizations and their cultural heritage, through a computerized union catalogue of the archaeological Libraries of the Institutions, foreign and Greek, in Athens. Their joint holdings, amounting to over 500,000 volumes covering the full range of Hellenic studies of all periods, including language, literature and thought, archaeology and history of art, ancient, medieval and modern history, topography, ethnology and folklore, are the most important in this field and are of world interest. By so linking these Libraries, we will make Athens the capital of learning in Mediterranean studies, effectively a new Alexandria. In addition, bibliographic information on articles published in journals and collective works will supplement the database of books. Readers in each Library will have direct access to the entire database, using multilingual menus and a detailed subject thesaurus to learn of bibliography and to locate the Library in which it is held.

The creation of B.O.I.R.A. was brought about through the consideration of a problem that arises amongst every team of archaeological researchers. This problem is the great amount of information that is produced and gathered as a result of the work being carried on. In order that the information should be efficiently controlled and assimilated, the handling of the various data should be done by means of computer software tools. The aim of this report is not to call attention to the data that has been compiled from examples of recording systems of archaeological research published so far, but rather to make known to researchers a different methodology, such as that of Yourdon and the so-called Chen entity-relation design. This is done by using CASE tools in order to develop software systems which are made to measure and are of a high standard, which have been successfully proved in their implementation and use. By way of example, a system has been designed capable of handling data usually dealt with by an archaeological team.

Computerised databases form an integral part of much archaeological work around the world, but few of these systems are designed with expansion or compatibility as a prerequisite. This paper investigates the problems of integrating data from a variety of sources, both urban and rural, and then discusses in detail the modular database solution adopted by two archaeological projects at the University of York. The discussed solution enables the integration of data collected from different sources, and at very different scales from the single record per site to the recording of every feature or artefact in more detailed databases. To conclude, the paper touches upon future developments in the field, and their potential impact upon the way in which we store and view archaeological data.

Archaeology is starting to face the challenges of electronic publication posed by advances in information technology; we are now able to offer almost all types of archaeological data in a single software environment, and have the opportunity to integrate hitherto discrete results. This paper describes the use of the University of Southampton’s ‘Microcosm’ open hypermedia system in an archaeological context. Microcosm is a set of programs running under Microsoft Windows which can support a variety of archaeological data, including databases, digitised site plans and survey data, synthetic text, and GIS images. The example uses the data generated by the Urban Origins in East Africa project, a Swedish-funded initiative to bring together archaeologists from ten East African countries and look at a regional problem. We suggest how the integration provided by multimedia can not only be a vital part of research work, but also be used in publicity, and provide the structure of a genuine regional resource.

This paper illustrates the computing section of a Strategic Project for the development of research methods applied to the study and safeguard of the archaeological heritage of southern Adriatic Italy. The project was launched by the Italian National Research Council and the University of Lecce. The computing section has as its objective the creation of a system for the management of data pertaining to antique settlements that guarantees the integration of three information supports: alphanumeric, cartographic and photographic. These supports contain data deriving from two interacting research systems: field survey and excavation. The cartographic data is varied: large scale maps, area and site plans, detailed plans of single monuments, stratigraphic sections and feature and layer plans. Software used consists of a relational database and a specific digitised mapping system. The system permits the acquisition of raster images. A global user-friendly interface which permits maximum navigation is in the process of completion. We foresee the principal field of application being the analysis of spatial distributions of artefacts and ecofacts as a basis for synchronic and diachronic cultural analysis.

SIRIS (Information system for the reconstruction of historical settlements) is a territorial recording project based on the standards established by the Italian Central Institute for Catalogue and Documentation. Its aim has been to create an integrated alphanumeric, cartographic, iconographic data bank to operate as an informative territorial system pertaining to the cultural heritage of the Emilia-Romagna Region. Information resulting from territorial analyses conducted during the project have been listed, memorised in alphanumeric files or on videodisks (in the case of photos) and then mapped. The research relating to the card-indexing of archivistic and cartographic documentary sources has covered the entire regional territory, while landscape and morphological analyses, cataloguing of architectural works and the study of planning instruments have been carried out in the boroughs of Boretto, Brescello, Gualtieri, Guastarla, Luzzara, Novellara, Poviglio and Reggiolo. All this information is now contained in an integrated multimedia data bank. A microcomputer (VAX) with a standard operating system (UNIX) and a DBMS (INFORMIX) manages the alphanumerical and digital mapping databases and contains the instructions to guide the user through the data banks. A highly developed work station presenting information by means of windows (software X-WINDOX'S) is available to the SIRIS user. Methodologies of human-computer interaction have been developed with particular care in order to achieve a complete and easy-to-use system. The project has been promoted by the Istituto per i Beni Culturali of the Emilia-Romagna Region and In-Systems and Management S.p.A..

The aim of the present piece of work is to devise a tool for the computerized handling of information regarding the re-use of classical material in Medieval and Renaissance buildings. In view of the variety, loose structure and complex interrelations of the data in question, and in view of the kind of people likely to be interested in the product (historians, art-historians and archaeologists), hypermedia and hypertextual techniques were adopted. Thus, the software chosen was HyperCard, together with HyperKRS for improved searching. Particular attention was paid to the problems connected with the simultaneous handling of text and images, as well as to the definition of the user-interface and the search and retrieval operations. The pilot study made use of material from the archaeological Collection of the Opera Primaziale of Pisa.

The authors present the research activity carried out at the Istituto di Archeologia of Bologna University. The projects concern in particular ceramic artefacts, from attic black-figured pottery to coarse ware. The procedures followed for the storage, retrieval and data analysis use DBMS, IRS, CAD and statistical packages. A database system was created in order to examine the diffusion of Athenian pottery during the first half of the VI century and to consider possible “export models”, archaic trade overseas of attic black-figured pottery and the role of fine Athenian vases in their own production context. In the coarse ware research project, statistical procedures and quantitative analyses were carried out in order to create a problem-oriented classification in which the pottery was used as an anthropological indicator. Finally, some computer graphics applications were undertaken with some fragmentary coarse ware vessels, and a comparison made with the traditional graphical representations.

The article is addressed to the archaeologist, usually a “non expert” beneficiary of the innovative computer science techniques, but, at the same time, bearer of very complex requests. It proposes to give a concise and up to date view of the state of CAD software, especially as regards tridimensional graphics.

The author describes new additional qualities of the program ARBOR which allow a less redundant object description and facilitate the setting up and the use of pictorial databases.

Nike is a computer system to support the archaeologist’s work. It can be used from the early phases of an archaeological excavation: from information gathering, to the actual excavation, up to the elaboration of its results. Nike organises in a single data base both graphical and textual data, in order to facilitate the collection, preservation, maintenance, and retrieval of information. Nike is a highly interactive system, and the navigation in the database depends on the result of the previous choice, according to the logical links present in the data itself, and guided by the specific needs of the researcher

The article explains the theoretical aspects of a cataloguing plan financed in the context of the so-called “Giacimenti Culturali” (Lana 41/86, Art. 15). This work concerns some areas of the city of Rome, in particular, monumental and topographical survey, territorial and architectonical cataloguing techniques, that are discussed here with the aid of computer science. The subsequent development of this plan will have as a fundamental issue the drawing of a prototypal magnetic Forma Urbis, suitable for, the safeguarding of the cultural heritage or for scientific purposes.

Archaeological knowledge can be formally divided into object and method knowledge. The former consists of the knowledge of the concrete nature of the individual research objects, and is based on analysis. The latter means the knowledge about how to evaluate the object knowledge with the help of interdisciplinary methods, and leads to historical knowledge as the synthesis. Object knowledge is based on individual observation, and method knowledge on comparison. ARBOR consists of a formal language able to represent textual object knowledge in a computer readable way. A PC-based implementation allows the retrieval on ARBOR-coded objects descriptions in different tree-structure-specific query-modes.

ALADINO is a database system created by the Centro di Documentazione of the Istituto Beni Culturali. It was used for data storage and retrieval during the course of the Roman and medieval excavations at Castelraimondo (Udine - Italy). Its distinctive features are flexibility, user friendly interfaces, the use of natural language and the automatic integration of alphanumeric data and images. ALADINO produces distribution maps of data acquired during excavation and allows frequency tables and simple uni- and bivariate analyses. At present, ALADINO has been further improved with new releases and it will be connected with other programs in order to study coarse wares through statistical analyses (cluster, multivariate, etc.) and to further implement a real computer-based information system.