L’Aerofototeca Nazionale al Convegno della European Archaeology Association (Vilnius 31 agosto - 4 settembre 2016)

Al convegno sarà presentato il contributo di Lisa Foa dal titolo "The Aerofototeca Nazionale of Rome: a photographic archive for the study of Italian Heritage". La relazione illustra la storia dell’Archivio quale supporto alle ricerche archeologiche e tratta di alcuni casi studio relativi allo sviluppo del territorio laziale, visto attraverso un secolo di immagini. La presentazione è programmata per il 3 settembre.

Per maggiori informazioni visita il sito del convegno da cui è possibile scaricare il programma.

Abstract

The Aerofototeca Nazionale of Rome: a photographic archive for the study of Italian heritage
Author - Foa, Lisa, Roma, Italy (Presenting author)
Keywords: archive, aerial archaeology, Adamesteanu

Today, with the use of commercial drones, aerial pictures of archaeological sites and landscapes can be easily obtained and, thanks to more or less user-friendly software, easily processed – as it was recently discussed at the 2nd International Aerial Archaeology Conference that took place in Rome in February 2016 – and present-day records can be compared with “preeconomic boom” images to better understand what has changed in our landscapes and single sites.
Since its creation, the Aerofototeca Nazionale, based in Rome, has acquired several different collections of aerial photographs. Today it houses aerophotographic materials that date from the very end of the 19th century (e.g., the images taken by G. Boni during his excavations in the Roman Forum) to recent years. The core of the collections are the thousands of images taken by the Allied air forces while surveying war zones during WWII; despite their often precarious preservation state, those
images depict several areas of the Italian Peninsula that look totally different today, due to the growth of urban areas and the development of infrastructures.
The Aerofototeca, founded in 1958, is a historical photographic archive of the ICCD – Istituto Centrale del Catalogo e Documentazione – part of the Italian Ministry of Culture (MiBACT).
The archaeologist Dinu Adamesteanu was the first director of the Aerofototeca. He organized the first body of archival materials and designed the archive as an instrument for the collection, preservation, cataloguing and study of aerial photographic records. The Aerofototeca is an essential source for archaeological research and the safeguarding of our heritage.
The author of this paper, during an 18-month internship at the Aerofototeca, followed by field research, worked on the rearrangement of a group of more than 4,000 slides, the so called “fondo Adamesteanu” (a focus on a selection of those slides was published on the periodical Archeologia Aerea VI, 2012). The aim of this paper is to show a few examples of the potential of this archive as a fundamental source for understanding the development of our fast-changing landscapes and as a tool for the safeguarding of Italian archaeological sites.
In particular, starting from the pioneering 1908 aerophotographic survey of a stretch of the Tiber River, some areas along the river will be analyzed on the basis of the materials available at the Aerofototeca, retracing phases of ancient and recent history of the landscape.