This study examines the long term interactions between the well-known Roman city of Ostia and a river meander. Located at the mouth of the Tiber River, Ostia was a major harbor city that connected Rome to the Mediterranean Sea. Based on aerial photography and boreholes analysis, the paleodynamics of the Fiume Morto's paleomeander are understood to be linked to the urban evolution of the city of Ostia. Four periods of evolution have been identified as a result of this interdisciplinary work: (1) the foundation of Ostia's urban center, in the 4 th -3 rd century BC, occurred when the meander already existed;(2) between the 4 th century BC and the 3 rd century AD, human/environmental interactions contributed to the compound growing of the meander which possibly eroded an important Roman road linking Ostia to Rome; (3) from the Imperial period until the meander was cut off in AD 1557-1562, the constricted meander channel at the apex led to the stability of the downstream river channel; (4) the cut off of the paleomeander was completed in 1562, leading to the filling of the paleochannel. These successive phases of channel evolution mark changing fluvial risks from the Roman period to today.
Gandharan art developed in the Himalayan area in the early centuries CE. It has been investigated mostly from an iconographic point of view, missing, until very recently, a systematic technical investigation of materials and techniques. Recently our team began performing chemical analyses of the traces of the polychromy originally covering statues, reliefs and architectural decorations, to discover the ancient painting techniques and artistic technologies. This paper presents the results of the analytical investigation (optical microscopy, Raman spectroscopy and gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry) of pigments, ground layers and binders of a new group of samples taken from stucco architectural decorations (2nd–3rd/4th centuries CE). The samples were collected directly at an archaeological site in the Swat Valley, ensuring the exact knowledge of their stratigraphic provenance, as well as the absence of any restoration treatment applied prior sampling. The results are discussed in the wider context of Gandharan polychromy investigated so far by our team, as found in sculptures and architectural decorations preserved in museums (in Italy and France) and in archaeological excavations in Pakistan. The aim of this research is to shed light on the materials and techniques of this Buddhist ancient art from this region and on the influences exerted on it from Eastern and Western artistic traditions.
When the restoration of archaeological metal artifacts is considered, the reconstruction and chromatic treatment of the gaps often determine the correct reading of the object, by suggesting its original morphology and external coloring as linked to the degraded surfaces.However, for such a kind of artifact, it is particularly frequent to deal with a remarkable diversity of reconstructions and integrations related to conceptions usually based on opposing principles ranging from mimetic integrations up to a strict rigorism. The purpose of the present work is to contribute to the definition of a conservative intervention protocol based on the reversibility to get a correct and widely perceptive presentation of the restoration work for this kind of artifacts, aimed at their formal reconstruction and aesthetic retouching.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.