Project data

Funding Entity: Italian Ministry of University and Research

Call: PRIN 2020

Coordinator: UNIVERSITA’ DEGLI STUDI DI SIENA

UNISI Principal Investigator: Giovanna Bianchi

Department: Dipartimento di Scienze Storiche e dei Beni Culturali

Start date: 22 May 2022 – End date: 22 May 2025

 

Description

The study of medieval castles is a key theme within European historical research. In Italy, recent work on the subject has greatly contributed to a sharpening of these questions, in particular those pertaining to the chronology of the transformations of castles. Between the second half of the 11th century and the end of the 12th, in fact, castles underwent a significant material shift, transforming from largely wooden palisades to durable stone fortifications featuring aristocratic residences and enclosed castral settlements. The aim of this project is thus sharpening these chronologies, through the application of a novel research strategy, never applied to an Italian context in a systematic manner before now. At its essence, it consists in identifying and selecting a significant sample of castles with standing structural remains dating between the second half of the 11th and the end of the 12th century, in order to conduct a series of archaeometric analyses on their lime mortars, which will lead us to a much more accurate chronological periodization of their construction. The originality of this project rests on four key aspects: its multidisciplinary approach; the high number of mortar samples that will be analysed; the linking of these analyses to historiographical themes of crucial significance; the creation of a dating protocol which can be applied to other contexts, thanks to the elaboration of models of advanced statistical analysis to process the multidisciplinary data acquired. The acquired data will be then compared against a sample of selected castles from central and northern Italy.

 

Project website