Abstract
The Apennines routes have always encouraged connections between the Tyrrhenian and Adriatic regions of Italy, and are pivotal even today. This situation leads to the perception of the Apennines mostly as a border conceived as a marginal and sparsely populated landscape. The APENNINESCAPE project aims at drawing attention to the microecology of the Northern Apennines, an anthropised landscape with a significant historical role, particularly important for those cities which exploited its extensive resources and took advantage of its osmotic function within the Peninsula. The project focuses on settlement, production and environmental resources exploitation strategies and the 1st millennium BC is chosen as the crucial time period during which the formative process of the Etruscan city with its socio-political structure took place. The advent of the city, through the organisation and managment of the controlled territories, imposed a new concept approach of landscape. In the past as today, the city can thus be considered as an agent negotiating the 'marginal landscape', such as the one of the Apennines. The case study will focus on the Reno valley and its tributaries to the north, as well as the Bisenzio and Sieve valleys to the south, two areas that have always been research fields of UNIBO and UNIFI RUs. So far studied separately, they will be analysed as a single entity on a long-term perspective for the first time. The project will be structured within an interdisciplinary approach, integrating multiple skills and technologies of the 3 RUs involved. UNIBO and UNIFI RUs will analyse the settlement and production dynamics within the ancient landscape paying particular attention to the resources of the territory (ores, clay, stones, and also water). Dealing with environmental resources, UNIBO UR will investigate the relationship between the past and the present of the valleys. CNR-UNIPI RU will investigate production processes and related resources across the territories, mainly dealing with the study of mobile finds (pottery, metals and by-products) with morphological, functional, and techno-archaeometric approaches. Together with the other RUs, CNR-UNIPI RU will also contribute to the development of comparative analyses in both the Po Valley and northern Etruria, in order to better identify possible trade routes connecting both districts. The development of digital tools will allow local stakeholders to elaborate new contents starting from the accessible results of the project, encouraging the communities’ reflexivity regarding their relationship with environmental resources and cities, and various touristic impacts. The theoretical and methodological premises of the APENNINESCAPE project, as well as its lines of action, are innovative and original. Moreover, they are perfectly aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, the European NGEU and the national PNRR plans, the Horizon Europe framework programme.
Results achieved
The University of Bologna Research Unit coordinated the APENNINESCAPE project and played a central role in reconstructing the settlement and production systems of the Central-Northern Apennines during the 1st millennium BCE. By integrating archaeology, environmental sciences, archaeometry, geography and digital technologies, the project has substantially advanced our understanding of the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, demonstrating that these mountain landscapes functioned as strategic corridors connecting Northern and Central Etruria rather than as peripheral territories. The research has produced new evidence on settlement organisation, resource exploitation, production systems and long-term landscape dynamics, establishing a multidisciplinary framework for the study of pre-Roman mountain societies. A major achievement of the Bologna Research Unit was the creation of an integrated digital research infrastructure, openly accessible through the APENNINESCAPE platform (www.apenninescape.it). The Unit designed the project's relational database and coordinated the development of the WebGIS platform, integrating archaeological, geomorphological, geological and archaeometric information within a FAIR-compliant and interoperable environment. The platform represents one of the first comprehensive digital infrastructures specifically dedicated to the historical landscapes of the Northern Apennines and provides an open repository of georeferenced data for researchers, heritage institutions and public authorities. The implementation of the WebGIS, the organisation of the digital resources and the development of the archaeometric database were carried out by Dr. Carlotta Trevisanello, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, whose work ensured the interoperability, accessibility and long-term sustainability of the project's analytical datasets. The project significantly expanded archaeological knowledge of the Middle Reno Valley and the wider Tuscan-Emilian Apennines by integrating archival documentation, published evidence and new field investigations into a single analytical framework. Archaeological mapping was systematically updated and extended to a supra-regional scale, producing a harmonised inventory of settlements, productive areas and environmental resources. Non-invasive investigations—including geophysical prospection, UAV photogrammetry, systematic fieldwalking and manual coring—identified new archaeological evidence and refined the reconstruction of settlement organisation, production areas and communication routes. At the same time, surveys documented clay deposits, copper-bearing formations and ancient extractive landscapes, providing the environmental framework necessary to interpret production and resource procurement. One of the project's most significant scientific outcomes is the creation of a comprehensive archaeometric dataset on Iron Age ceramics, copper alloys and metallurgical residues, now freely available through the project WebGIS and the Zenodo repository. By integrating petrographic, mineralogical, geochemical, metallographic and lead isotope analyses, the project reconstructed production technologies, raw material procurement strategies and metallurgical supply networks at an unprecedented regional scale. The results indicate that copper circulating in Etruria Padana derived from multiple geological sources, including southern Tuscany and the south-eastern Alps, substantially revising previous models that primarily attributed metal supply to local Apennine mineral resources. At the same time, ceramic production has been shown to rely predominantly on locally available clay resources, while the combined analysis of ceramic and metallurgical evidence highlights the close relationship between different craft activities within the productive districts of Kainua-Marzabotto. The Bologna Research Unit also established new protocols for the digital management of archaeological information by developing controlled vocabularies, standardised terminology and relational data structures capable of linking archaeological contexts, ceramic fabrics, metallurgical remains, alloy compositions, isotopic signatures and provenance hypotheses within a unified analytical environment. These procedures substantially improve data interoperability and reproducibility, providing a methodological reference for future archaeometric and archaeological research. The database has been continuously expanded through research, teaching activities and student participation, incorporating new datasets extending as far as the Apuan Alps and significantly enlarging the project's original geographical scope. Beyond archaeological research, the Bologna Unit promoted an interdisciplinary investigation of the relationships between cultural heritage, local communities and contemporary territorial transformations under the scientific coordination of Prof. Matteo Proto. Through qualitative fieldwork carried out in the Reno and Bisenzio valleys, the research examined heritage-making processes, demographic change, territorial governance and sustainable tourism, demonstrating how archaeological heritage can actively contribute to local identity, social cohesion and sustainable development in mountain regions. This line of research was developed by Maristella Cingia, Research Fellow, whose fieldwork focused on geographical analysis, participatory research and the socio-spatial dynamics of cultural heritage, strengthening the integration between archaeological interpretation and contemporary territorial studies. The scientific results have been disseminated through the APENNINESCAPE digital platform, international conferences, workshops and public engagement initiatives organised or co-organised by the Bologna Research Unit. These include the workshop The Apennines between Past and Present: Resources, Environment and Open Data (Bologna, February 2025) and the 2nd International Conference on the Etruscan Material Culture of the Apennines (Dicomano and Grizzana Morandi, November 2025), both of which promoted international discussion on archaeological landscapes, production systems, digital heritage and open science. The project has already generated peer-reviewed publications, conference proceedings and open-access datasets, while additional papers on predictive modelling, lead isotope geochemistry and production systems are currently in preparation.Project details
Unibo Team Leader: Andrea Gaucci
Unibo involved Department/s:
Dipartimento di Storia Culture Civiltà
Coordinator:
ALMA MATER STUDIORUM - Università di Bologna(Italy)
Total Eu Contribution: Euro (EUR) 204.756,00
Total Unibo Contribution: Euro (EUR) 78.618,00
Project Duration in months: 24
Start Date:
28/09/2023
End Date:
28/02/2026
