Studying the landscape and its settlement patterns in Central Sicily

• Grant number: 21/09092-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Post-doctor
• Start date: January 23, 2022
• End date: January 22, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Archeology - Historical Archaeology
• Principal Investigator: Margarida Maria de Carvalho
• Grantee: Viviana Lo Monaco
• Supervisor: Aurelio Burgio
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais (FCHS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Franca. Franca , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Università degli Studi di Palermo (UNIPA), Italy
• Associated to the scholarship: 19/11731-2 - People and Movements in Central Sicily: Settlement Patterns and Territory Changes in Antiquity, BP.PD

Abstract

The present project aims to present the activities I intend to carry out in my internship at the Laboratory of Ancient Topography of the University of Palermo and plane of my fieldwork research.During the twelve months of BEPE internship it will be carry out: a bibliographical survey (which will allow a critical analysis of archaeological, geological and geophysics available documentation of the territory); superficial surveys and analysis through remote sensing; the processing of data; and the elaboration of an inventory of archaeological features of the region. The territory object of my study is a portion of inner land in the municipality of Caltanissetta (Sicily). In the last forty years, Landscape Archeology turned its attention to the countryside and its role in the economic, political and social changes in different historical epochs. Inner territories supplied products for consumption and commerce and their inhabitants were active part of the development of bigger cities. To study the landscape, Archaeology has numerous tools and methods borrowed from other sciences, like geology and geophysics, which provide most of the used research strategies of topographic survey, including the use of tools that allow non-invasive interventions. In my fieldwork I propose the use of these methodologies and strategies, compatibly with the possibilities offered by the very nature of the territory. Archaeological collected data will be crossed with historiographic documentation to be able to understand the life history of the region.The result of my internship research will be a mapping of selected areas of interest, a list of archaeological features from the Prehistory to modern era and a possible reconstruction of settlement patterns. (AU)