L'archeologia dell'architettura in Italia nell'ultimo quinquennio (1997-2001)

Abstract

The author makes a summary on the situation of Building Archaeology in Italy from the 1990s onwards, when the creation of the journal “Archeologia dell’architettura” and several Congresses made it possible for different groups of investigators to share their strategies and experience, both regarding stratigraphic readings and their relationship to restoration and the study of buildings techniques, dimensional chronology and archaeometry. A key argument in this debate has been the application of this set of methods to architectural restoration, and experimentation on the static equilibrium sequence, degradation and wall coating as crucial instruments in a correct restoration process. This debate has given lesser focus to the main goal of the archaeologist: to obtain historical information from stratigraphic reconstructions, for which becomes in turn necessary to prepare repertoires and undertake extensive studies, relate archaeology to agrarian structures and landscape transformations as well as with social and economic structures. Archaeologists must work on this issue on the following years, without leaving aside the intimate relationship established with architectural restoration, to preserve the building patrimony in a context which should promote cultural multicentralism, the exchange of ideas and a recovery of civil society.