The project aims to reconstruct the war dynamics in the city and their impacts on the population, on the buildings, on the territory. The climate of discontinuous belligerence that was present in the region during Middle Age it was the base of the city¿s founding in the IXth c. A.D. It caused the lack of open space battles, but the use of structures and life models which are set on defense as a main role model and, as a consequence, a ¿mental model¿ that influenced the town planning, buildings, supply organization, professions, demography, social setup. The aim is to investigate widely all this war dynamic, with an extensive research group of diversified skills.
Historians and philologists will piece the regions¿ historical dynamics, handling the examination of unedited documents for the region¿s and town¿s configuration; it will be read the historiography on the war idea and about the city on war, in a local perspective, which Middle Age develops in every aspect.
It will be resumed the archeological excavation, with special regarding to the districts which host the garrison and the government headquarter, and fortifications and the necropolis too. It will be conducted a detailed work on the masonries destined or reused for military purposes, in order to reconstruct life stages and chronological sequences, with a geological research about the supply's sources. All kind of weapons and bullets already discovered will be linked to the retrieval context. Art historians will manage the iconographic research of architectures and war machines. Mechanical engineers will continue an already started work about war landscapes and the reconstruction of war machines; sound engineers will evaluate the impact of the acoustic on the location of poor visibility defensive buildings. Anthropologists and medicine historians will analyze the over five hundred uncovered people and the state of health during war time, as well as the specific pathologies related to assaults.
The project, even if it exploits the traditional research methods and the investigation¿s process of Medieval Archeology and Topography, it will sort out and use finding tools not yet tested on the site and territory of Leopoli-Cencelle and therefore new, believing that they can enrich the knowledge of the area. Data will be examined by the project¿s members, all of them differently specialized in many academic fields, and who can, everyone with his own expertise, return the historical depth of the war phenomenon in all its complexity.
Reasons which caused the choice of Leopoli are well understood, as an example of the relationship between city and defense during Middle Age, a topic which regarding the case of Cencelle has been treated by every single aspects and never as a whole thing, even considering the rich bibliography of the papal city.
The project will focus on the comprehension of which one is the war effect on the Leopoli-Cencelle civitas and if it is possible to identify "war landscapes" or "postwar landscapes", calling back the concept of "half-stable balance", in which the interaction between of every component is dynamic yet so unstable that an external trouble (like war), it can trigger a state of equilibrium completely different from the original one.
Project's cognitive tools are:
a) archaeological predictive-map (elaborated in a QGIS 2.18.19 system) of Leopoli-Cencelle¿ territory, which will be made also with a LIDAR survey. This map will integrate archaeological finds (already examined) with geological and geomorphologic data, with historical cartography¿s analysis and ancient cadastres¿ data, with toponymy and aerial photography acquired via UAV technology (Unmanned aerial vehicle). Such a map will allow to outline the diachronic evolution of landscape in its natural and anthropic elements, in order to seize the impact of traumatic events, like war, on the landscape. Creation of a GIS platform will not be used only as a data running tool or to produce thematic maps, but it will essential in the understanding process, playing a role in the developing of particular questions
b) Graphic and photographic survey of the structural components made by the combination of Total Station and Drone SAPR Phantom 4 Advance. The drone, because of its reduced dimensions, a type of a combined camera (a 32mega pixel Go-Pro) and its ability to hovering, will allow to made a photographic survey following aerophotogrammetry principles, in order to map the area involved in research activities with acquisition of detailed photos, general perspective of the hill and of single buildings. Acquired data will be processed with the Agisoft Photoscan platform for the creation of the point cloud, georeferenced and scaled, from which it is possible to obtain ortophotos of buildings, which will be drawn.
c) Pipeline for the management and processing of completely digital documentation with consequential addition of war artifacts record cards in a QGIS system, so that it will be possible to make a query with data. The diagnostics of metal finds, carried out following archaeological method, can be integrated with diagnosis techniques concerning the imaging, such as macrophotos (for the superficial morphology of finds) and the 3D reconstruction f the same artifacts through the use of a structured light 3D scanner
d) Archeo-metallurgic study (scoria analysis, raw materials, half-finished artifacts and finished artifacts) of a real logistic sustainability (not-invasive analysis) of war artifacts
e) Inner and outer ballistic analysis, to speculate about the identification of war machines used during sieges and where they were located. Inner ballistics own method reconstruct condition of how bullets leave the machine and starts their launch, allowing to define the type of war machine which was used and its project. The outer ballistics, defined by the flight dynamic of the bullet and siege¿s conditions topography which cause starting and arrival positions of it, allows to find the location of launch areas and technical ability of the launch itself
f) Visibility map of Leopoli-Cencelle created by using as a measurement reference the medium high of the wall's towers, in order to identify the weakness in the structural and topographic perspective of Leopoli-Cencelle
g) Analysis of the main specimen of resident population, unique occasion that allows to verify the health conditions of a uniform community in a war context.