Periodic Reporting for period 3 - ROMETRANS (Rome Transformed: Interdisciplinary analysis of political, military and religious regenerations of the city's forgotten quarter C1-C8 CE)
Période du rapport: 2022-10-01 au 2024-03-31
This project revolutionises our understanding of Rome and its place in cultural change across the Mediterranean World by mapping political, military and religious changes to the Eastern Caelian from the first to eighth centuries. The programme offers multiple gains for archaeologists, historians, topographers and geographers by documenting both the mundane and monumental elements of the city fabric in chronological, geographical and ideological relationship to one another. From the extravagant horti, the houses of elite families, through successive imperial palaces to the seat of papal governance the area’s architecture embodied changing expressions of political power. From the early military stations, through the grandeur of the barracks of the emperor’s horse guards, to the building and rebuilding of the Aurelian Walls, it reveals notions about the intersection of security and military power. From the shrines of the early empire to the world’s first Cathedral, it attests successive religious regenerations. RomeTrans has three objectives: first, it determines the appearance of the buildings that drove these changes, producing academically robust visualisations, appropriately contextualised. Second, it brings these elements together to model the five transformations that saw the Eastern Caelian reshaped to meet the needs of shifting political, military and religious ideas. Third, it provides a longer-term interdisciplinary perspective on the changing shape of this pivotal area than any previously attempted. All this requires a survey of unprecedented scale and sophistication, demanding a new methodology for complex urban areas capable of transforming research in historic towns worldwide. Integrating documentary sources, architectural analysis, investigation of 11 sub-surface excavated areas with the largest geo-radar and laser scanning surveys ever conducted in Rome, the project transforms our approach to the city and its relationship to the wider world.
Since its launch in October 2019 RomeTrans has combined an extensive programme of fieldwork in Rome with a broad-ranging agenda designed to advance interdisciplinary analysis for the development of complex cityscapes. The agenda brings together beneficiaries at Newcastle University, Università di Firenze, the British School of Rome and the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche. Their work, funded by the European Research Council, has received permission to operate and generous expert support from Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali Roma, the Soprintendenza Speciale di Roma Archeologia Belle Arti Paesaggio and the Musei Vaticani. An international project team, encompassing archaeologists, architects, engineers environmental scientists, geographers, geologists, geophysicists, historians, and topographers has been formed to take this work forward. Despite the challenges posed by COVID, members of the RomeTrans team have achieved many of their ambitious goals for data capture. This involved three types of field work (geophysical survey, structural analysis of exposed archaeology, and paleo-environmental sampling) together with a programme of archival analysis. The combined geophysical survey, the largest such survey ever undertaken for archaeological purposes in Rome, brought together leading specialists in geophysical prospection, a form of research often described as ‘seeing beneath the soil’. In this case, the work has been conducted across a wide variety of surfaces, including 3.5 kms of roads in the south-east of the ancient city. Geophysicists from the British School at Rome, the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche and Geostudi Astier combined their expertise in the use of ground penetrating radar, and electrical resistance tomography, to cover over thirty separate working areas. Work on exposed archaeology, some still prominent above the streets of Rome today, other (often substantial) elements often visible only in historic excavations not normally open to the public, has been undertaken at virtually every known site of archaeological interest within the research area. This research combines detailed examination of the structures by specialists within the team, and, in the particular case of the archaeological area at S. Croce in Gerusalemme, with an existing research team led by Anna De Santis, ensuring comprehensive coverage by a standardized recording system. Integral to this study is a programme of laser scanning (TLS) and Structure from Motion imaging, which has permitted the team to construct 3D digital twins of the sites, greatly facilitating ongoing research. Alongside the TLS work undertaken by project members, Marco Solvi and members of ArcheoTech&Survey LTD University of Siena provided Structure from Motion coverage through the targeted use of light UAVs (Drones). The third strand of field data capture consisted largely of a bore-hole drilling campaign overseen by geomorphologist Carlo Rosa, but also incorporated a reappraisal of borehole data previously assembled in the Metro Linea C engineering works. Archival work, which faced its own very particular challenges given COVID related closures, nonetheless gathered substantial amounts of data about the area in addition to drawing information from Rome's ArcheoSITAR database.
Off-site work has focussed on the essential development of the data management systems that support the programme, including two particularly innovative aspects of RomeTrans, RT SCIEDOC and RT 3D. RT SCIEDOC is designed to make the information that informs the visualisations produced by the project accessible, with a view to provoking further discussion and analysis of RomeTrans findings. RT 3D allows teams to generate digital terrain models of buried ground surfaces at different times in the past.
Off-site work has focussed on the essential development of the data management systems that support the programme, including two particularly innovative aspects of RomeTrans, RT SCIEDOC and RT 3D. RT SCIEDOC is designed to make the information that informs the visualisations produced by the project accessible, with a view to provoking further discussion and analysis of RomeTrans findings. RT 3D allows teams to generate digital terrain models of buried ground surfaces at different times in the past.
Supporting and driving the programme of synthesis and integration of field and archive data are two RomeTrans innovations which we believe will become important for future researchers tackling the development of historic landscapes and cities. RT SCIEDOC has been developed in association with Marc Grellert of Technische Universität Darmstadt, originator of the first SCIEDOC (the Scientific Documentation Method). It is used in support of RomeTrans’ 'provocations', visualisations that are used to test, argue and articulate hypotheses about ancient structures. Crucial to the system is the way that it not only makes the research underpinning these visualisations accessible and transparent, it also facilitates interdisciplinary debate on the interpretations they embody. RT 3D, developed as part of RomeTrans by the LabGeo team at the University of Florence under the leadership of Prof Margherita Azzari has another goal. It offers a user-friendly system that enables researchers to model past-land surfaces, creating Digital Terrain Models that can be used with other database systems. RT 3D is particularly important for the RomeTrans team in their research area, as ground surface levels changed dramatically in the periods under investigation.
As the project advances, the rich body of field and archive data gathered will, with the aid of RT SCIEDOC and RT 3D serve to feed a deeper understanding of the south-east of Rome and its development over eight formative centuries, but in the process it will also develop a new approach to the study of complex urban sites that has still wider implications for our understanding of past and future cities.
As the project advances, the rich body of field and archive data gathered will, with the aid of RT SCIEDOC and RT 3D serve to feed a deeper understanding of the south-east of Rome and its development over eight formative centuries, but in the process it will also develop a new approach to the study of complex urban sites that has still wider implications for our understanding of past and future cities.