Cultural Heritage in the Near and Middle East, and in Africa

Educational objectives

The course aims to provide knowledge and comprehension skills that complement and/or reinforce those acquired in the first cycle of studies, and to enable students to deal with original themes also in a research context, formulating judgements in a more complex and articulated form, communicating the knowledge and processes that led to their acquisition, and studying the topics independently. The course aims to present, in a diachronic manner, starting from the Middle Chalcolithic age, the conformation of the landscape of the Fertile Crescent, highlighting the aspects related to the occupation and management of the territory as well as the socio-economic and cultural implications of this environment in relation to urban development.

Educational objectives

The course aims at debating, through the analysis of the most representative archaeological and figurative contexts, the origins and the transformations of the social complexities in Mesopotamia, Arabian Peninsula and Syria from the ‘dawn’ of the urban civilization to the political formations of the Assyrian, Babylonian and Achaemenid great empires.

Educational objectives

The course aims to provide knowledge of documentation and historical philological issues in the context of the ancient Near East.

Educational objectives

The course aims to provide students with the knowledge and understanding of the method of critical investigation of sources, in particular Armenian ones, trying to enable them to apply this knowledge in the field of investigation covered by the course and in related historical and geographical contexts. Students will be guided to face, understand and evaluate the ethnic and cultural complexity of the area under study, to evaluate it through the formulation of autonomous judgments based on the acquired knowledge, and expressed in a clear and understandable way.

Educational objectives

The course aims to provide knowledge and comprehension skills that complement and/or reinforce those acquired in the first cycle of studies, and to enable students to deal with original themes also in a research context, formulating judgements in a more complex and articulated form, communicating the knowledge and processes that led to their acquisition, and studying the topics independently. Knowledge and understanding of the formation processes of the first sedentary societies and the oldest hierarchical pre-state societies in the Near East. Analysis of the regional differences (cultural, social, environmental and economic) that led to the establishment of the first urban and state societies. Relevant areas are: Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Levant, Egypt and Iran.

Educational objectives

The course aims to provide knowledge and comprehension skills that complement and/or reinforce those acquired in the first cycle of studies, and to enable students to deal with original themes also in a research context, formulating judgements in a more complex and articulated form, communicating the knowledge and processes that led to their acquisition, and studying the topics independently. The specific goal is to provide the student, through significant cases of provincial archaeology, with a broad view of the culture of the Roman Empire, of the problems between the centre and the periphery, a picture of the main historical, cultural and religious dynamics of the eastern provinces.

Educational objectives

The aim of the course is studying the territory and the landscape in connection with the anthropogenic action, through a specific methodology: use of the literary, archival and bibliographic sources, historical and modern cartography, remote sensing and geomorphological analysis.

Educational objectives

The course will offer a wide overview on the usage and applications of digital technologies in the Archaeological research. Special focus will be put on one hand on the on-field data collection by offering an examination of the principal digital technologies for measurements and topographical survey, and on the other to the data transformation, management, analysis, sharing and publication, by the means of databases and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Particular attention will be paid to the use of web and semantic-web technologies.

Educational objectives

The course aims at presenting the students with a general overview of the field of Historical Linguistics, with particular attention to the relationships between the different writing systems used to represent ancient Oriental languages and the methods to identify the linguistic systems they represent.

Educational objectives

The course aims at giving a basic knowledge of the Semitic languages of the Ancient Near East and of the relative writing traditions. A comparative linguistic analysis will be combined with the study of the ancient written documents and of the various literary genres, providing the relevant methodology to interpret such documentation within the different cultural contexts of the region.

Educational objectives

Introduction to the oral and literary forms of expression of the religious message of Christianity; relationship of these forms with the literary culture of the context in which it spreads; introduction to the literatures of Christianity in various linguistic forms: first Greek, Latin and Syriac, then Coptic, Ethiopian, Armenian and Georgian.

Educational objectives

The course aims to provide knowledge and comprehension skills that complement and/or reinforce those acquired in the first cycle of studies, and to enable students to deal with original themes also in a research context, formulating judgements in a more complex and articulated form, communicating the knowledge and processes that led to their acquisition, and studying the topics independently. The course provides a good level of knowledge of Sumerian literature from a linguistic, historical-religious and ritual point of view.

Educational objectives

The course aims to provide knowledge and comprehension skills that complement and/or reinforce those acquired in the first cycle of studies, and to enable students to deal with original themes also in a research context, formulating judgements in a more complex and articulated form, communicating the knowledge and processes that led to their acquisition, and studying the topics independently. The specific goal is a good historical knowledge and an average knowledge of the Hittite language.

Educational objectives

The course aims to analyse, from the historical, historical-religious and architectural perspective, the archaeological contexts of ancient Egypt - necropolises, urban settlements, military structures - from the fifth millennium BC to the Late Period.

Educational objectives

The aim of the course is to deepen the methods and knowledge of the discipline, in a wide chronological span from the 7th to the 13th century and in the vast area of the territories subject to Islam, starting from the region of its birth, i.e. the Arabian Peninsula, up to the most eastern (India and Central Asia) and western (Maghreb, Spain and Sicily) offshoots.

Educational objectives

The course aims to provide the students with a broad outlook of the linguistic, functional, technical, and compositional development of the epigraphic tradition in pre-Islamic Iran. The course will focus on the critical analysis of epigraphic corpora defined by language or type of material. Thanks to the inclusive methodology, based on the investigation of the content-related, historical, and cultural aspects, the students will achieve specialized competencies refining their skills in the field of epigraphy and gaining an in-depth understanding of the problems related to the study of the Iranian civilization.

Educational objectives

The aim of the course is increasing the knowledge acquired after the Bechelor Degree concerning the nature, alteration processes and degradation of materials used in the field of cultural heritage (stone, ceramics, glass, plasters), as well as studying the investigation methods usually applied, focusing on recent and innovative applications. This information will allow students to independently develop a research project (which will be set during the laboratory hours and evaluated at the end of the course) to present it and promote it.

A - Knowledge and understanding
OF 1) Knowing the composition of the main geomaterials applied in the cultural heritage (ceramic, glass, mortar and plaster, stone).
OF 2) Knowing the production processes and the degradation phenomena of the main geomaterials applied in the cultural heritage (ceramic, glass, mortar and plaster, stone).
OF 3) Knowing the analytical methods usually used in the characterization of the main geomaterials applied in the cultural heritage (ceramic, glass, mortar and plaster, stone).
OF 4) Knowing some advanced analytical methods used recently in the characterization of the main geomaterials applied in the cultural heritage (ceramic, glass, mortar and plaster, stone).
OF 5) Understanding the problems connected to the mortar dating and the recent projects focused on this topic
OF 6) Understanding the problems connected to the white marble provenance and the recent projects focused on this topic

B - Application skills
OF 7) Being able to deduce the innovative aspects proposed in the scientific articles in the analysis of the main geomaterials applied in the cultural heritage (ceramic, glass, mortar and plaster, stone).
OF 8) Being able to deduce the problems still present and not solved in the analysis of the main geomaterials applied in the cultural heritage (ceramic, glass, mortar and plaster, stone).

C – Autonomy of judgment
OF 9) Being able to deduce a possible method useful to solve the problems still present in the analysis of the main geomaterials applied in the cultural heritage (ceramic, glass, mortar and plaster, stone)
OF 10) Being able to create a scientific project focused on the analysis of one of the main geomaterials applied in the cultural heritage (ceramic, glass, mortar and plaster, stone).

D - Communication skills
OF 11) Knowing how to write a scientific project
OF 12) Knowing how to communicate the project to people not included in the academic world

E - Ability to learn
OF 13) Having the ability to consult scientific literature on geomaterials applied in the cultural heritage (ceramic, glass, mortar and plaster, stone)
OF 14) Having the ability to consult database on national and international scientific projects.

Educational objectives

At the end of the course, students will be able to: i) identify theoretical and methodological tools for the study of food and culture in archaeology; ii) critically analyze studies on food consumption in the past; iii) improve their understanding of biomolecular techniques in Archaeology; iv) understand the integration between theoretical perspectives and lab-based analysis.