As every year since 1994, the project aims to continue archaeological excavations in the town of Cencelle. For 2021, the main objective is to highlight the close relationship between place, resources, environment, methods and work practices, bringing together all the information from interdisciplinary research over the last 26 years. The programme consists of continuing archaeological investigations in the following areas: the cemetery, the political centre, in which there is a large pottery kiln, the military garrison, but above all in a large unexplored sector in the south-west of the city, where part of the inhabited area and craft facilities are expected to be found.
The entire research group will focus on issues related to the work and physiognomy of the various trades present in Cencelle, with the aim of integrating and expanding the archaeological information. This year's group is again very diversified: anthropologists, archaeozoologists, botanists, engineers, topographers, historians, art historians, Christian historians, restorers and restoration theorists come together with the archaeologists in the reconstruction of the environment and workplaces. In particular, the following will be analysed and reconstructed: the traces left on the individuals buried at Cencelle (more than 900), also through muscular-skeletal analyses; the workshops and artisan laboratories of ceramics and metal, by means of advanced documentation techniques; the area where the soldiers stayed; the artefacts produced at Cencelle, also by experimenting with prototype instrumentation specially made for the purpose. Finally, great care will be taken with the restoration of structures and artefacts. As usual, all data will be fed into the SIGEDAC system, which is constantly updated and represents the basis for processing the Cencelle research.
Archaeological investigations in a medieval city, in terms of long-term research starting from an early medieval foundation and of possibility of taking into consideration the entire urban surface, already constitute an element of innovation itself. The 2021 project focuses on various aspects, trying to contribute with the archaeological vision to a picture that for the Middle Ages is almost exclusively based on written sources. To make research more effective, innovative technologies are also tested and interdisciplinary visions are applied.
In particular:
- The application in the archaeological field of the digital techniques of Reverse Engineering (RE), started in close collaboration with the engineering component. The purpose, in addition to the processing of data in the field, will be useful for the creation of best practices and case studies to be adopted in training researchers to use RE techniques not only as an acquisition tool but also to return the entire computer work loops on the finds, allowing you to document the artifacts found on the excavation in real time, limit their movement, speed up their study. Above all, we intend to experiment a study model for contexts with quantitative grades of materials (in the case of Cencelle, for example, the ceramic artefacts exceed 100.000 fragments).
- The available anthropological data on a large skeletal sample (N=900) constitutes a starting point for a more in-deep investigation on the dynamics and the lifestyle of population of Cencelle. This skeletal series represents an outstanding model to gaining knowledge on the long-term evolution through a multidisciplinary approach combining skeletal biology, stable isotope analysis from bone proteins, ancient DNA (aDNA) analysis and metagenomic analysis from dental calculus focusing on the mortality patterns, the epidemiological regime, the prevalence of diseases as well as dietary and medicinal habits. The palaeopathological data will be necessary to evaluate the prevalence of diseases and disorders as well as gender differences. First of all the morphological examination will be extended to those individuals that have not been analysed yet in order to assess the presence of potential pathological alterations, moreover ancient DNA (aDNA) analysis could be performed on pathological individual in order to achieve a differential diagnosis. In addition to all that, non-specific stress markers could provide useful data concerning general wealth, nutritional status social structure, and population dynamic. In this scenario dietary pattern reconstruction represents an important issue as food consumption has a significant influence on human behaviour and has been interlinked with major changes in human history and ecological conditions. Past dietary habits could be reconstructed by carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analysis from bone proteins that provide a direct measure of an individual diet as well as by the metagenomics analysis of dental calculus that allows exploring broad
aspects of past human diet and health. This cutting-edge technology, in fact will provide a new instrument to investigate and understand the microscopic world associated with the human body, providing insight into the evolution, movement and demise of ancient societies, enhancing the comprehension of the impact of bacterial evolution as well as how cultural, social, and environmental changes influenced human health and behaviour.
- The excavation at Cencelle represents a sort of training field for the High Institute of Conservation and Renovation of MIC. The restoration works by ISCR personnel and emergency interventions will not be only performed on artifacts and structures, but they will be also tested on non-toxic biocides, long-lasting mortars, non-transportable materials subject to temperature leaps. Teams of restorers will be on the site during excavations and moreover they will monitor the site regularly over the year. The existence of an experimental excavation active all year round, at the expense of MIBAC, gives the project an extraordinary potential for the field of restoration, even because during the winter term, transportable materials from the excavations get restored in the ISCR courses.
The connection with the MedioEva Interuniversity Center, allows a deepening on gender studies and on the impact of women in the world of work, from the intersection of archaeological, anthropological and environmental data.
- The implementation of a specific IT system where to gather all data, including those concerning restoration, with an archiving system in Cloud, makes the Cencelle project, a model of good practice in the conservation and long-term data management, other than a constant methodologic update. The implementation of the system, the creation of the WebGis, the improvement of the website will allow the migration of data towards a wider use of information towards a more diversified public, also in the territory of Cencelle.