I_MAP

The Mapping Italia Antiqua Project (acronym I_MAP) is funded by Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici and led by Rodolfo Brancato. I_MAP aims to create the Digital Atlas of Ancient Italy, an automated aggregator of Digital Archaeological Objects (DAOs). Archaeological landscapes are complex and layered entities, palimpsests composed of interconnected elements, including their textual and cartographic representations. The project seeks to apply semantic and graphic automatic harvesting tools, combined with AI-driven recognition, to collect, analyze, and visualize DAOs, starting with cartographic representations of ancient Italy and Sicily. Since 2021, in the Archaeological Digital Mapping Lab of the University of Naples, I_MAP has been focused on: 1) digitizing legacy data; 2) semantically annotating Philipp Clüver’s maps of Sicilia Antiqua (1619) and Italia Antiqua (1624); and 3) conducting archaeological surveys in Lazio, Campania, Calabria, and Sicily. I_MAP seeks to expand the traditional boundaries of archaeological mapping by integrating field surveys and remote sensing analysis with AI applications. The project will create a digital Atlas of Ancient Italy, aggregating DAOs in linked and open formats, automatically reflecting the current advances in archaeological research. It will be accessible to a wide audience, from scholars to students. The research question of I_MAP is to explore the evolution of settlement systems from the 1st m. BCE to the 1st millennium CE, combining digital humanities (web ontologies, machine learning, automatic pattern recognition) with topography (GIS technology, 3D surveys, remote and proximal sensing). This approach will provide a refined knowledge on the archaeological landscapes of Italy and Sicily, challenging traditional stereotypes about settlement continuities and discontinuities across millennia.