Cristina Corsi – författare

The Route of the Franks presents a scientific study of the journey that Archbishop Sigeric of Canterbury undertook at the end of the first millennium from the British Isles to Rome, focussing on the segment included in the territory of modern France. It not only reconstructs the route that Sigeric followed here but also takes an archaeological snapshot of the urban and architectural developments in the centres crossed by this route at the twilight of the first millennium AD.Sigeric’s journey, undertaken for reasons connected to his office, is framed within the historical context of the contemporary Anglo-Saxon world. The special relationship connecting Rome and Canterbury during the Early Middle Ages is also analysed and an archaeological overview of the archbishop’s town is attempted. Sigeric’s experience is framed in the historical context of medieval journeys from England to Rome and the Holy Land. Building upon the literature, culture and narratives of travel, the modalities and practicalities of this type of movement in the Middle Ages are reconstructed, reviewing the many other possible routes across France and the reasons which determined Sigeric’s choice.This brings the author to a new conceptualisation of travel in the past and to study how it affected the identity of the traveller, how individuals and groups interacted in the peculiar framework of displacement, introducing sociological and anthropological perspectives. By applying theoretical frameworks developed in the fields of geography, social sciences, anthropology, environmental behavioural studies, phenomenology, spatial analysis, ICTs and cognitive studies, the book reveals how movement affects the perception of landscapes and how mobility patterns socio-cultural phenomena.

Field survey has been making a major contribution to our understanding of the rural landscapes of the Mediterranean for nearly forty years. During that time the techniques used to map ancient settlement patterns have grown in sophistication from being a process of simply identifying sites in the landscape, to one which provided nuanced understandings of their layouts, chronologies and contexts. This has led to a revolution in how archaeologists approach urban sites, with survey techniques being used increasingly often to generate a plan of a town site prior to excavation as a way of ensuring that the excavation can be used to address site-specific questions in a way that had not been possible before. Most recently, research has begun to reveal the advantages of integrating a range of different non-destructive techniques on urban sites. In combination with exciting new computer-based means of data visualization, all of this work means that it is now possible to virtually reconstruct a buried town within a relatively short space of time, as opposed to the old and destructive excavation-centered approach that could take generations. Unsurprisingly these advances are starting to make a very important understanding to urbanism in general and the Roman Empire in particular. Urban Landscape Survey in Italy and the Mediterranean builds upon all these new developments and is one of the first publications to focus exclusively upon the contribution of survey techniques to our understanding of ancient towns. It addresses methodology led enquiry into the nature of urban settlements primarily in Italy, but also in Greece, Turkey, Croatia, Portugal and Spain. The twenty-two papers from leading specialists in the field focus on two underlying themes. The first deals with the characterization of urban sites and draws upon a wide range of case studies. These range from key protohistoric centres in central and south Italy, to towns that epitomise the contradictions of cultural change under Rome, such as Paestum, Aquinum and Sagalassos, to Roman centres such as Teano, Suasa and Ammaia. The second theme is inter-urban relationships, looking in particular at wider urbanized landscapes in Italy. The fascinating selection of recent and on-going projects presented here significantly moves the limits of our current knowledge about ancient towns.

This volume represents the most important “deliverable” of the European-funded project Radio-Past (www.radiopast.eu). It is intended to disseminate the key results achieved in the form of methodological guidelines for the application of non-destructive approaches in order to understand, visualize and manage complex archaeological sites, in particular large multi-period settlements whose remains are still mostly buried. The authors were selected from among the project research “staff” but also from among leading international specialists who served as speakers at the two international events organized in the framework of the project (the Valle Giulia Colloquium of Rome – 2009 and the Colloquium of Ghent – 2013) and at the three Specialization Fora, the high formation training activities organized in 2010, 2011 and 2012. As such, the book offers contributions on diverse aspects of the research process (data capture, data management, data elaboration, data visualization and site management), presenting the state of the art and drafting guidelines for good practice in each field.