Insegnamento
METHODOLOGY OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH
Docente
PAOLO CARAFA
Students will acquire skills in the following areas:
• reading, interpreting and reconstructing stratifications, monuments and ancient landscapes;
• creation and use of archaeological information systems.
Students will also learn how to use material-culture data to understand and interpret historical, economic and social processes.
In particular, the didactic program covers the following topics:
1. Methods applied in integration and interpretation of stratified contexts;
2. classification of artifacts and other kind of evidence;
3. integrating and reconstructing ancient classical architecture and more extended spatial units;
4. basic principles of stratigraphical analyses and landscape archaeology;
5. IT management of archaeological data;
6. methods and instruments aiming at the reconstruction of architectural and topographical history of ancient cities.
In the first part of the course the topics listed will be addressed from the theoretical point of view, in the second part practical examples will be analyzed in contexts from ancient Rome and Latium.
Colin Renfrew, Paul Bahn, Archaeology: Theories, Methods, and Practice, Thames & Hudson Ltd 2012.
Edward C. Harris, Principles of archaeological stratigraphy, Academic Press Limited 1989.
Paolo Carafa, The information system of Ancient Rome in A. Carandini, P. Carafa (eds.), The Atlas of Ancient Rome: Biography and Portraits of the City, Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford 2017, pp. 44-55.
The educational tools used will be video lessons dealing with theoretical topics and their application in selected case studies.
The course is developed through:
16 hours of frontal teaching (32 video lectures)
6 hours of interactive teaching (practical exercise of archaeological matrix).
Teaching materials are provided to be used to carry out practical tests of interpretation of archaeological stratifications. There is also a self-assessment section with questions and answers that help to better prepare the exam.
Students will be assessed through an oral exam to verify the acquisition of skills on the topics covered in the videos and in the indicated bibliography.
Students are strongly encouraged to perform the interactive activities, that will be evaluated during the exam.
Students who have successfully passed the exam will know how to deal with the investigation and study of multi-layered archaeological contexts. The skills acquired can be used in different areas of cultural heritage (research, protection, enhancement). The acquired skills are indispensable: in the realization of the archaeological documentation required for those who work in the excavations; in the creation of archaeological maps and risk maps; in the management of materials found during the excavations; in the creation and management of databases.
Students can also have practical experience of archaeological investigation by participating in the archaeological excavation campaign conducted by the Department of Sciences of the Antiquity of "Sapienza" Università di Roma on the southern slopes of the Palatine Hill.