Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ACTECH (Ancient ConstructionTECHniques between East and West. Building traditions, technological innovations and workmanship circulation: from Roman Arabia to Medieval Europe.)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2017-03-01 al 2019-02-28
The study of building techniques therefore means the possibility of acquiring raw data about ancient societies, especially where written sources are scarce or even completely absent. As an expression of human activity they can evolve, change and be transmitted via direct contact and exchange between different cultures.
Starting from this premise the ACTECH Project has explored the evolution and the distribution of specific building techniques (walls and arches) in the Near East. The main objective of the research is to attempt to fill a void in the history of architecture, contributing to the debate on the transmission of building knowledge between antiquity and the early Middle Ages (II – X) in the Mediterranean and trying to understand how and to what extent eastern building techniques contributed to the development of their western equivalents.
In order to reach this objective the ACTECH Project has analysed building processes starting from a specific geographic context: northern Jordan, where the ancient architecture, especially of the Byzantine and Islamic periods, is so well-preserved that a detailed study of the materials and the methods of traditional construction can be undertaken, with special attention given to rural architecture. The research subsequently expanded to other Mediterranean contexts in order to reflect more broadly on the issues under consideration.
The project had the following Research Objectives (RO):
RO1. To identify the main traditional building techniques in northern Jordan with particular reference to techniques for the construction of walls and arches;
RO2. To identify and isolate the elements of continuity and discontinuity in the building techniques and supplement these data with other available sources in order to understand the probable contribution of new features/differences from distinct cultural and technological contexts. Therefore to organize chronologically the different types of techniques identified in a table of chronotypes;
RO3. To extend the analysis of building knowledge to other geographic and cultural contexts, in particular the Iberian Peninsula;
RO4. To test and implement a protocol for the recording of material remains as well as for the management and organization of the data for future projects of restoration and enhancement of the built heritage;
RO5. To communicate this knowledge of the Near Eastern built heritage to a wider audience beyond experts in the field.
One of the project’s main results was the creation of a chrono-typological table on a regional scale, that is a model in which the building techniques are organized in chronological sequence according to the identification of specific technical and formal characteristics. This “tool” has facilitated reflection in greater detail on the technological and typological changes in architecture between the Roman period and the first centuries of Islam.
The project’s results and activities were abundantly sponsored via a purposely-created carnet de recherche; the project’s Twitter and Instagram pages facilitated dissemination of the research to a broader public. The project was presented at international meetings, and the Principal Investigator gave lessons based on it to university and secondary-school audiences and participated in seminars and masterclasses. A network of scientific collaborations with local institutions was established in Jordan, in particular with the Department of Antiquities of Jordan and Yarmouk University. Thanks to the collaboration with EUNIC Jordan, the purely scientific aspects of the research were supplemented with an enhancement project for the archaeological site of Umm as-Surab which included the creation of a didactic route in Arabic and English and the organization of an open day designed to make the local population, especially the youngest, more aware of their own cultural heritage.
At the scientific level, one of the most important outcomes of the project was the organization of an international workshop in Paris, where the results of several research projects on ancient Mediterranean architecture were presented and discussed.
At the socio-economic level, on the one hand the ACTECH Project has developed best practices for the documentation and protection of built heritage, and on the other hand it has laid the foundation for stimulating development in specific local contexts such as a village in northern Jordan.