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Part I – Archaeology in the ground.
1. Starting point: excavation.
In a treatment that intends to describe the run of sites, parks and finds "from earth to light" an
introductive chapter can't be missed, which cares to give a some space to the key moment –
though anything but unique occasion of Archaeological discovery5 - of field survey.
I will go ahead, in following paragraphs, with a short presentation of techniques of Archaeological
excavation, paying particular attention to the look of excavation's documentation and edition, that
is the first wedge of that transfer to "public" – of specialists – which will be the principal object of
this thesis.
1.1 Before excavation. Diagnostics.
Being Archaeological excavation in itself, as showed above, the key moment but not unique of field
survey it will be necessary to destine some words to the treatment of preliminary operations.
In the absence of a general consent on affiliation of aerial and satellite photograph to diagnostic
phase or to recognitive one6, you can choose here to amalgamate them to the first, since it seems
more appropriate to refer to "diagnostics" looking at those techniques which allow a more widen
research of handiworks' distribution, of architectural and buried structures and of stratification's
extent, leaving the paragraph about the reconnaissance.
Since it isn't a thesis expressly dedicated to the topic, at any rate, I will restrict myself to a
summery introduction of main techniques for field's survey and research7.
-Aerial Photograph: initially, it is made possible by the use of aerostats or kites8, it lies in bird's-
eye view, today by means of small planes, of fields on which you intend to investigate. It's
necessary clarifying that two types of aerial photograph exist: oblique photo, that is useful to exalt
the perspective and the forms and therefore it is more suitable for a site's discovery, and
Archaeological Zenithal photo, that is suitable to the drawing up of installations' plan. It is to be
pointed out that oblique photo also allows the spotting of crop-marks, namely field's and
vegetation's unevennesses, that are produced by the presence of covered finds, of which, in this
way, visible traces9 outcrop.
5
ZANINI 2000, page 298
6
F. Cambi attends to satellite photos and aerial photograph in CAMBI 2000, pages 122-133; vice versa RENFREW-
BAHN 2006, pages 70-95, talk about "aerial reconnaissance" in the paragraph dedicated to sites’ reconnaissance,
designino the other diagnostic techniques for the paragraph of "subsoil survey.
7
For a wide and accurate report of pre-excavation strategies (including both reconnaissance and diagnostic techniques),
see ROSKAMS 2001, pages 40-61; the assumed presentation here refers to CAMBI 2000, pages 123-133 and to
RENFREW-BAHN 2006, pages 70-95.
8
It’s famous the case of Henry Wellcome, who in 1913 took pictures excavations in Sudan: see ADDISON 1949.
9
PICCARRETA 1987, page XVI.
6
-Satellite remote sensing: it is used largely in presence of installations of great and greatest sizes,
because of great scale of images. Among main employs we can remind the survey of dikes' system
in Mesopotamia and of Maya installations in Yucatan. Main systems are LANDSAT satellites and
SLAR and LIDAR radars.
-Feelers: metallic bars that are introduced in the field to record shapes and cavities. Among
thinkers who more contributed to the improvement of feelers' technique, we can remember Carlo
Maurilio Lerici, who searched with a pipe equipped with pericopical top, lamp and camera many
hundreds of Etruscan graves10; further refinements are needed in the last decades with
technologies such as endoscope and miniaturized television cameras.
-Field surveys: they are non-destructive techniques, which are essentially sub divisible in active
methods (that namely are based on energy transfer through the field) and passive ones (that
namely measure physical characteristics without conducting energy). Among active surveys we
can note mass pouring method, which consists in the analysis of the sound that is produced by
the field after it has been struck with a wooden hammer; the stationary waves method, which is
based on Rayleigh waves, allows to obtain informations about field's nature, by striking the
ground slightly, at more or less regular intervals; the sonar, or echo sounding, which works
thanks to vibrations that are emitted by transmitter and rejected by transducer; it is similar the
functioning of ground penetrating radar (GPR), which uses radio impulses rather than sound
waves; electric resistivity method is instead based on the correlation between electric conductivity
and soil dampness: by measuring resistance that subsoil opposes to the electricity transfer it is
possible to individualize type of ground or existence of pools and holes; electromagnetic survey, on
which also technology of c.d. metal detector is engaged, allows instead, producing a magnetic
field, to pick up electric field generated by bodies, equipped with high conductivity, that are in the
field. Among passive surveys those Earth's magnetic are to be pointed out, which are realized
through Earth's magnetic field's measurement and location of those field's points where the
presence of bodies with anomalous magnetic characteristics – not only metals, but also objects
with residual magnetism of heating phases as kilns or terracotta handiworks. Further
instruments, though more destructive if compared to the previous, are represented by direct
sampling techniques of field's sample, as probing.
10
LERICI-CARABELLI-SEGRE 1958
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1.2 Before excavation. Field survey.
Field survey consists on a series of activities which are turned to the location of Archaeological
installations in a given area, or more precisely of "genetic components that belong to a specific
setting/palimpsest"11. It's well specifying that this operation – very intensive and, therefore,
expensive – is generally reserved to those sites which are visible only thanks to handiworks'
traces, often brought to light by agricultural machineries, and it isn't applied to installations
which maintain much evident signs of architectural structures.
Effectively the reconnaissance realizes in the act of researchers' team, in this case called
reconnaissance men, who cross the fields by parallel lines in sight of the excaving site's choice,
which will be based on useful principles for search planning, such as the valuation of a
stratification's Archaeological potentiality12, and will be besides expressed in handiworks' research
and other Archaeological proofs; such remainders are then documented in detail through the use
of files and with photos and draws, and therefore taken on the basis of principles as typological
place of finds and utility for installation's age determination.
To be more precise, sampling takes its place in this level of Archaeological survey, that is
selection's process of some, limited, site's areas, which are used to go back to the characteristics
of most wide group they belong to13. In a historical view it's necessary moreover remembering how
the introduction of probabilistic sampling in the 60's has been followed, after the 70's, by a
growing feel of inferential statistics' limits that is applied to Archaeology, that with time has lost
presumed characters of infallibility, given it in a first time, but not for this it has been left, given
technique's utility even in terms of determination of economic covering necessary for the
excavation14.
Sampling process comes true anyway in sampling areas' definition, generally transepts or
squares, which can be displaced in a raisonne or random way and of which dimension has to be
decided from the studied site15.
About reconnaissance method's pertinence to sites' finding it has to be clarified that, if it's real
that allowing to bring to light a considerable quantity of sites once not found, it's equally real that
reconnaissance is all the more newsworthy as anthropological shapes' incisiveness on
construction housing typologies and bed power are bigger – on an empirical level it will be
generally more appropriate to the settlements of which dating is included between the VII century
BC and the VI - VII century AD16-.
11
CAMBI 2000, page 251.
12
CARANDINI 2000a, pages 39-40, he suggests to complete the use of techniques above described with the bare of
iconographic documentations written for eventual previous searches.
13
TERRENATO 2000, page 47.
14
SHENNAN 1997, pages 361-362.
15
CAMBI- TERRENATO 1994, page 149.
16
CAMBI 2000, page 255.
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Reconnaissance's primary aims can be detected in an Archaeological cartography's writing of the
searched area and, consequently, on one side in the definition of territory's preservation activities,
with the production of Archaeological risk's maps17 useful to local administrations' technical
offices and to other local governments18, and on the other side in the definition of an historical-
Archaeological placement of settlement, on the strength of indications that Archaeological
reconnaissance can provide – better if with an appropriate cover of national country – about
typological class of handiworks and about landscape Archaeology19; a further aim, well consistent
with the issue of this thesis, consists on Archaeological parks' arrangement in areas which are
detected thanks to reconnaissance on the field.
17
GUERMANDI 2001.
18
SOMMELLA 1989.
19
CARANDINI 1989.
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