Remote Sensing and Ground-truthing of a Medieval Mound (Tuscany - Italy)

The medieval site introduced in this relationship and individualized in the summer 2005 to the feet of Scarlino (province of Grosseto) can express in concrete the ideal image of a buried archaeological patrimony that patiently attends to be open. This ancient settlement already other times had been grazed by archaeological searches on the field and in a case even observing old aerial photos: nevertheless the investigation on the ground had ended up always positioning itself on a side or on the other of the site, without never gathering the position and the entity of it. Despite the study of the aerial photo had already allowed to hypothesize in base to the form of the anomaly the identification with a mound (datable to medieval age?), the lack of correspondence on the ground for years had made to think to a glare of the search. We like to think that it was not still simply the moment for this site to be discovered. The greatest disciplinary articulation of the actual archaeological search and the possibilities offered by the recent technologies have allowed to overcome the fleeting attempts of “clandestine” survival of an archaeological site that promises to be one of the most stimulating medieval contexts of this territory. The new result derives from a convergence of factors and activities of search, tied up above all to an interest for the study of the territory that has already been being expressed for many decades in the district of Scarlino. From 1979, when the Department of Archaeology of the University of Siena has begun the archeological excavation in the castel of Scarlino, center inhabited chief town of the commune, stratigraphical and territorial investigations have followed and have contributed to make more this area one of the more studied in the province. To the old studies we have to add the recents activities promoted inside the same Department from the Laboratory of Archaeology of the Landscapes and Telerilevamento, that it develops based methodologies of archaeological search on the application of technological innovations. The site of the Castellina is representing a good bench of test for this attempt of enrichment of the archaeological knowledges with the application of new techniques for extensive investigations.