Objectives
The study of medieval castles is a key theme within European historical research, one that has been tackled extensively, but which still retains numerous open questions. 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 precise timings and the rhythms of these transformations, however, remain difficult to discern within the broader period in question. This is partly due to the limitations of the written sources, which all too often provide little information on the topic. The archaeological evidence can also be of limited help, as the index fossils for this period only provide archaeologists with broad chronologies, thus further compounding the issue. The aim of this project is thus sharpening these chronologies, through the development and 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 eleventh and the end of the twelfth 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.
Multidisciplinary research
The uniqueness and originality of this project rests on four key aspects: its multidisciplinary approach; the high number of mortar samples that will be analysed, selected from a vast geographical area (120 samples, resulting in 840 characterisations and 180 radiocarbon dating sets); the linking of these analyses to historiographical themes of crucial significance (chronology of construction and transformations of castles, modes of development of rural seigneuries, history of rural landscapes, and more); and the creation of a dating protocol which can be exported and applied to other contexts, thanks to the elaboration of models of advanced statistical analysis to process the multidisciplinary data acquired.
The focus of the multidisciplinary research will be on Tuscany, as one of the best-studied regions of Italy. The acquired data and the new investigative protocol will be then compared and tested against a sample of selected castles from central and northern Italy.
Feasibility/high risk?
The apparent simplicity of the project’s goals disguises a significant degree of complexity. There are a series of methodological challenges that need to be faced and conditions that need to be met to ensure the feasibility and the success of the project. On one hand, the sample needs to be selected from areas that have previously been subject of ample and high-quality research and which can in turn provide a solid foundation of knowledge to build on, in both historical and archaeo-architectural terms. On the other hand, the archaeometric analyses must be based on a significant level of experience in this field of research, as they will require the testing of new analytic protocols to counter the problem of the calibration curve for 14C dating (which, at present, does not allow for narrow calendar age ranges for the twelfth century).
