Scientific output
Publications Romboni M., Arienzo I., Antonio Di Vito M., Lubritto C., Piochi M., Di Cicco M. R., Rickards O., Rolfo M. F., Sevink J., De Angelis F., Alessandri L., Isotopic evidence for population dynamics in the Central Italian Copper Age and Bronze Age, bioRxiv, 2021.09.30.462554; doi: 10.1101/2021.09.30.462554 Alessandri L., Cardello G. L., Attema…
Scientific quality
This research program is designed to test a clear hypothesis – that a refugee population from Campania settled in the south Lazio coastal plains immediately after the Avellino eruption – by tracing the environmental and cultural effects that such a population influx would have caused. For the most part it…
Structure of research
Structure of the program The core of the research program consists of three closely linked research projects, each requiring an experienced researcher. A detailed understanding of the soils, lithology and geochronology in their spatial context (W. van Gorp) must underlie the sampling, analysis and interpretation of the archaeobotanical record (M.…
Description of research
Description of research About four thousand years ago, a major eruption of the Monte Somma Vesuvius devastated the landscape and the flourishing Early Bronze Age society then occupying the southern part of the region of Campania (Italy). Following an initial small eruption, which is thought to have allowed the population…
The Avellino Project
Around 1995 BC, during the Early Bronze Age, a giant eruption of Mount Vesuvius buried a flourishing landscape of villages and fields in the plains to the north and east of the volcano under more than a meter of ash. Inhabitants of Campanian sites such as Nola (‘the Bronze Age…
Geology
[caption id="attachment_603" align="alignleft" width="300"] Tephra sites in the Agro Pontino and Fondi basin. A: higher Pleistocene marine terraces, B: low-lying Agro Pontino Graben, C: Fondi basin[/caption] Dr. Wouter van Gorp have two tasks: firstly, to refine Feiken’s (2014) geological and palaeogeographical reconstruction of the central Pontine graben, expand it to the…
Archaeology
During the fieldwork phase of this project, Dr. Luca Alessandri will revisit, together with his colleagues, as many of the known but poorly documented sites and scatters of the EBA and MBA period in the study area as possible. The goal here is to extract the missing stratigraphic and paleogeographic…
Palaeoecology
[caption id="attachment_613" align="alignleft" width="300"] The Agro Pontino and Fondi basin. A: higher Pleistocene marine terraces, B: low-lying Agro Pontino Graben, C: Fondi basin[/caption] Pollen and macrofossil data will be used to reconstruct the vegetation in the coastal wetlands of south Lazio before and after the Avellino eruption. The aim of…