Search

Knowledge and management of areas with various cultural and natural assets represent both a challenge and an opportunity: a challenge, since it is not so trivial to analyse and to correlate different assets in the same geographic area, and an opportunity, since it represents a chance for scientific cooperation, communication, and dissemination of activities in territorial and cultural enhancement and for approaching themes and topics that are often socially a bit known, or unknown. At the same time, this will lead to having more awareness of peculiarities present in one's territory and consequently to operate in such a way for geoconservation. The Area of Multidisciplinary Interest (AMI) can offer copious literature on its cultural heritage, even if it is often referred to as specific and/or expert end users. A multidisciplinary approach to the cultural and environmental heritage and to its communication/dissemination is required to avoid dispersal of knowledge. The Mount Vulture area, in southern Italy, has been chosen as an example of testing the possibility to work out, on the trail of previous similar studies, multicultural subjects to enhance the cultural heritage of territory, for use by both geo and non-geo end users. The Vulture is a strato-volcano whose activity was developed in Middle Pleistocene times, and thus, its genesis and evolution are therefore linked to the recent deformation activity affecting the south-Apennine chain. Some Vulture areas have represented the ideal habitat for life, hunting, and gathering activities in prehistoric times. Many sites of interest have provided palaeontological and archaeological materials allowing a deeper knowledge of the environmental context of the human presence during Palaeolithic and Mesolithic times. Topics as human, environment, and landscape evolutions are here proposed and designed for students with a different educational degree.

Cultural heritage is the creative expression of a people’s presence in the past. It represents a driving force to create, develop, and consolidate the sense of identity, belonging, and citizenship, as well as a means to appreciate the diversity of people and develop a policy for peace and mutual understanding. Furthermore, heritage is a source of economic development and a key factor for sustainable development. The dissemination of such values among people and the transmission of heritage to the future generations entail putting into the field proper actions, from the knowledge to the protection and conservation, and from the enhancement to the fruition and management. Such requirements increasingly involve the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) that can be considered the paradigm shift to create novel job opportunities in the field of cultural heritage. This paper aims to discuss an experience led by the Institute of Archaeological and Monumental Heritage of the (Italian) National Research Council (IBAM-CNR), with students of a secondary school of the Basilicata region (Southern Italy). The experience developed within the framework of the School-Work Alternation (SWA) (recently renamed “Pathways for Transversal Competences and Orientation” by Italian law), a training modality envisaged in the Italian school system to bring the school closer to the world of work by proper partnership between formal education contexts and external organizations. The SWA Project revolves around the acquisition of some technical and methodological tools for the approach to knowledge, conservation, and enhancement of cultural heritage, having particular regard for diagnostic tools and ICTs. This article deals with the outcomes of the activities developed during the Project, discussing both the technical-professional and transversal skills acquired or expected to be acquired by the students. In addition, starting from the results of the activities, the authors speculate about possible outlooks of SWA in the heritage field considering: (i) the role of such a training path in raising young people’s awareness to preserve cultural heritage by becoming active and proactive citizens; (ii) the relationship of SWA with regional and European-supported development policy strategies; (iii) the potential benefits that SWA can provide for cultural heritage from the synergy between different institutional actors.

This paper presents the results of an experiment aiming to measure the vibrational frequencies of the main structures of the medieval church of San Domenico (Matera, southern Italy) and relate them to the mechanical properties of geological stratigraphy and construction materials. Vibrational frequencies are measured by means of the ground-based radar inteferometry technique using a Ku-band radar. Time series of ground-based radar data are processed to measure displacements and vibration frequencies of the church structures. Data collected by a seismic triaxal station for the measurement of the H/V ratio are also processed to compare with radar-based frequencies measurements, providing information about the main vibration frequency ranges of the church structures and, more important, disentangle the site and structure vibration frequencies.

The current study aims to analyse the conservation state of the Sassi of Matera site (Southern Italy), a place inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1993 (the Sassi and the Park of the Rupestrian Churches of Matera) and recently awarded 2019 European Capital of Culture. Furthermore, the article considers the influence of some of the causative factors controlling the Matera building conservation state, paying particular attention to the site microclimatic conditions such as the insolation and winds. We studied this subject through a new methodology that makes a combined use both of stone decay data gained from the extensive field assessments of the visible weathering forms catalogued in an ad hoc questionnaire and GIS advanced spatial analysis techniques such as Map Algebra and Kernel Density Estimation. The research puts into evidence that the Sassi of Matera shows a fair state of conservation that is conditioned by the wind/rain actions and sun exposure. Besides, just the already well known facts that the surfaces facing north seem to be most influenced by the wind/rain actions; and that, on the contrary, the decay of the walls facing south seems to be guided mainly from the sun exposure, put into evidence the importance of locating the intensities of the decays in any urban tissue or any site in order to plan conservation interventions and prioritize actions and the usefulness of the spatial analysis techniques and data processing., Project “PRO_CULT” (Advanced methodological approaches and technologies for Protection and Security of Cultural Heritage) financed by Regional Operational Programme ERDF 2007/2013.

Archaeological risk maps are very important both for archaeological research and for urban and territorial planning. Spatial analysis can help to improve existing methods at the local scale. In this paper spatial analysis, that is map algebra and point pattern analysis, are used, for an area characterized by several Neolithic Sites located in the Tavoliere di Puglia (Southern Italy), to 1) calculate the archaeological vulnerability with an improved predictive model that considers spatial autocorrelation together with environmental factors, 2) assess the flooding hazard with the use of morphometric indexes; that have been made spatially distributed in order to improve the effectiveness of results, 3) carry out an archaeological risk map for flooding that shows a high risk level for already known archaeological sites and areas with a high probability to find new sites. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.

The use of GIS and Spatial Analysis for predictive models is an important topic in preventive archaeology. Both of these tools play an important role in the Support Decision System (SDS) for archaeological research and for providing information useful to reduce archaeological risk. Over the years, a number of predictive models in the GIS environment have been developed and proposed. The existing models substantially differ from each other in methodological approaches and parameters used for performing the analysis. Until now, only few works consider spatial autocorrelation, which can provide more effective results. This paper provides a brief review of the existing predictive models, and then proposes a new methodological approach, applied to the neolithic sites in the Apulian Tavoliere (Southern Italy), that combines traditional techniques with methods that allow us to include spatial autocorrelation analysis to take into account the spatial relationships among the diverse sites.

ATHENA is an on-going Horizon 2020 Twinning project aiming to promote remote sensing technologies for cultural heritage (CH) applications in Cyprus. ATHENA project brings together the Eratosthenes Research Center (ERC) of the Cyprus University of Technology (CUT) with two internationally leading institutions of Europe, namely the National Research Council of Italy (CNR) and the German Aerospace Centre (DLR). The project’s scope is to position the ERC regionally and stimulate future cooperation through placements at partner institutions and enhance the research and academic profile of all participants. The scientific strengthening and networking achieved through the ATHENA project could be of great benefit not only for Cyprus but for the entire Eastern Mediterranean, bearing a plethora of archaeological sites and monuments urgently calling for monitoring and safeguarding. The preservation of CH and landscape comprises a strategic priority not only to guarantee cultural treasures and evidence of the human past to future generations, but also to exploit them as a strategic and valuable economic asset. The objective of this paper is to present knowledge transfer examples achieved from the ATHENA project through intense training activities. These activities were also designed to enhance the scientific profile of the research staff and to accelerate the development of research capabilities of the ERC. At the same time the results from the training activities were also exploited to promote earth observation knowledge and best practices intended for CH. The activities included active and passive remote sensing data used for archaeological applications, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image analysis for change and deformation detection, monitoring of risk factors related to cultural heritage sites including archaeological looting etc.

The use of satellite remote sensing in archaeology is rapidly spreading, with a growing interest from the archaeological community and important results at different levels of application. The paper has been developed within the Ebla Chora Project (ECP), in the framework of ERG IDEAS Programme, which offers a unique opportunity to test theories and models about the rise and structure of the early state by expanding the level of analysis to the landscape around the archaeological site. In fact, the case of Ebla, in northern Syria, is certainly one of the most favourable ones for enhancing our understanding of mechanisms of functioning of the early state. The discovery, in 1975, of royal archives consisting of 17.000 cuneiform tablets dating to c. 2300 BC has supplied the scientific community with an invaluable mass of documents dealing with all aspects of state organization. With the aim of building a multi-tier explanatory pattern which can be applied to other early foci of urbanization in the Near East or elsewhere, the research in the ECP encompasses different disciplines in a multidisciplinary modern scientific approach, involving e. g. Geomatics, Geology, Geomorphology, Agriculture, Landscape Analysis. In this context, remote sensing data supply an invaluable source of information for the current situation of the territory and for the recent past, as well as providing essential keys for interpreting ancient patterns (Lasaponara & Masini 2012). Classification of multispectral imagery, 30 feature extraction and several image analysis procedures are being carried out and the first results are presented here.