Physics Uncovering the Past

A team of scientists from ICTP's Multidisciplinary Laboratory have discovered the probable remains of a Roman fort in an area of north-eastern Italy unknown to contain such structures.

The discovery was unearthed not by traditional archaeological excavation methods but by analysing images produced by Airborne Light Detection And Ranging (LIDAR).

LIDAR uses laser light to remotely sense the properties of objects. In the case of the ICTP research, the "objects" were a series of archaeological sites in the Trieste Karst, a region northeast of the Adriatic Sea.

ICTP scientists Federico Bernardini and Claudio Tuniz produced a digital terrain model from the LIDAR images, which revealed a number of unknown fortified structures. Among those is a rectangular area of about 165 by 134 meters containing a second, inner wall, suggesting the remains of a Roman military fort, a structure almost completely unknown in the studied area, according to the researchers.

The fort could be related to Roman military activities in the Adriatic area during the third Istrian war (178-177 a.C.), the researchers speculate, although they call for further archaeological investigations before drawing any firm conclusions about the role of the site.

Results of the analysis will be published in the Journal of Archaeological Science. The work is part of the ICTP/Elettra EXACT Project (Elemental X-ray Analysis and computed Tomography) funded by Regione Friuli - Venezia Giulia (Italy), and was done with cooperation from  Ispettorato agricoltura e foreste di Gorizia e Trieste, the University of Trieste and other institutions.