Seminars on ancient topography and landscape archaeology
The cycle of Seminars on ancient topography and landscape archaeology for the 2025-26 academic year continues, with a new event organized by Rodolfo Brancato.
The meeting will host Roberto Goffredo, from the Università di Foggia (Department of Humanities), and Roberto Ragno, from the University of Cambridge (McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research).
Roberto Goffredo’s talk, entitled “Archeologia, paesaggi, comunità: la Puglia come laboratorio di ricerca e sperimentazione“, proposes a reflection on the research experience developed by the archaeology area of the University of Foggia concerning the historical landscapes in Puglia. Particular attention will be given to the relationship between research and local communities in building shared paths of knowledge and enhancement. By referencing three ongoing projects—the Northern Apulia Coastal Landscape Project, the CAP70014 Castiglione project, and the Foggia900 project—different approaches, practices, and areas of experimentation will be brought into focus. Together, these cases demonstrate how archaeology can operate not only as a tool for understanding the past but also as a public practice capable of impacting the present, strengthening the bond between communities and places.
Following this, Roberto Ragno will present on “Metodi quantitativi applicati alla ricerca dei paesaggi storici della Puglia settentrionale costiera“. The seminar will explore how to statistically interpret a historical landscape starting from data collected by the Northern Apulia Coastal Survey (NACS) during the 2024-25 campaigns in the coastal plain of Manfredonia-Sipontum. A series of quantitative approaches, primarily Bayesian, will be presented across different scales of analysis: from the topographical unit to the site and, finally, to the landscape. It will start with surface ceramic assemblages, moving on to the spatial distribution of settlement intensity and chronological reconstruction, all the way to the ecological niche modeling of the identified sites. The goal of the discussed quantitative methods is not exclusively technical: the models become a useful tool to restore complexity to a landscape that has long been considered marginal.
The in-person event will be held on Tuesday, April 28, 2026, from 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM, in Aula 709 of the Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici at Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, located at Via Nuova Marina 33 in Naples.
Click here to follow remotely.
For all other information, write to: rodolfo.brancato@unina.it or visit the FeDHLab page.
