Archeologia dell’edilizia storica e costruzione del documento archeologico. Problemi di popolamento mediterraneo. I. Un’archeologia del costruito per la storia del territorio medievale

Abstract

Archaeological reading and stratigraphic elevation methodology allow for an original reading of material documentation and, in the case of the Mediterranean experience of this University of Florence research group, a genuinely interpretative historiographic outline. This research programme seeks to contribute to scientific and technical innovation and study methodologies. University research has aimed to establish some relationship between the stratigraphic analysis of the elevations and an understanding of social, economic, political and territorial dynamics, through territorial analysis —from settlements to castle formation— and urbanistic and archaeo-seismic analyses. To do so various methodologies have been developed and integrated in order to carry out an overall territorial analysis through light archaeology (landscape archaeology, environmental archaeology, archaeology of architecture, computing archaeology, particular excavations). An interactive database, PETRAdate, was set up to process all of the data collected. This research is one case study in a University of Florence project entitled «Feudal Mediterranean Society: Archaeological Aspects». The project analyses the architectonic production of a series of Tuscan and Mediterranean areas through a comparative procedure allowing the analysis of peculiarities and common aspects, contacts, influences and the evolution of the modality and of the medieval landscape’s formation times in the regions analysed. The historic issues studied are related to the processes of population and occupation of areas of a different feudal nature (the feudal incastellamento in Pratomagno; the territorial organization of Jordan during the Crusades; the low medieval folding of Mount Amiata; the defensive forms of the Calabrian coast over time; the system of common rule and the incastellamento of Bastia, Corsica and in Monsummano, Valdinievole. This type of study allows new documental bases to be created which can be used in historical syntheses.