The development of Digital Photogrammetry (DP) in the last decade allows a wide variety of new techniques which hold the potential to accelerate and improve traditional research methods.  Archaeology is one scientific discipline which particularly benefits from the application of DP for the purposes of documentation, reconstruction and communication. Within the Armedea project, DP has been applied to several case studies ranging from single structures… Read More Photogrammetric recording of earthquake affected sites. Some examples from Armedea fieldwork

2nd-4th December 2016 Rewley House, Oxford This interdisciplinary conference will explore what happened when natural disasters affected medieval European societies (AD 500-1550). The focus is archaeological and historical but we also aim to bring together geographers, seismologists, climatologists and others to discuss the impacts of rapid onset disasters such as geophysical and hydro-meteorological hazards, among… Read More SMA Annual Conference. Waiting for the End of the World: The Archaeology of Risk and its Perception in the Middle Ages

One of the most intriguing goals addressed by the ArMedEa project is to better understand how seismic risk was spread across medieval Europe. In order to do that, the first step of our study has measured to what extent large medieval cities with a population higher than 10k inhabitants (73 in total at the beginning of the… Read More Estimating the exposure to seismic hazard of large urban populations in late medieval Europe

In September 2015, the Armedea Project completed the first archaeological evaluation in Vila Franca do Campo, island of São Miguel, Azores (Portugal). The fieldwork was carried out by the Department of Archaeology of Durham University and the Centro de História d’Aquém e d’Além-Mar (CHAM), Universidade Nova de Lisboa – Universidade dos Açores, with the participation of the School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia.… Read More Vila Franca do Campo, São Miguel, Azores. 2015 Fieldwork Short Report.

Between the end of April and the beginning of May 2015, fieldwork was carried out at the fortified Arab village of El Castillejo, Guajar Faragüit, Granada (Spain). Built on the top of an isolated hill facing the village of Guajar Faragüit, its surface of ca. 1.5 ha (120 m x 130 m) is clearly defined… Read More Fieldwork in “El Castillejo” – Guajar Faragüit, Granada, Spain

Earthquakes produce widespread damage to buildings, infrastructures and landscape. Historical buildings are significantly exposed to seismic risk,  and in many seismogenic areas their preservation is often threatened by seismic hazard. Many recent earthquakes in Italy (Friuli 1976, Umbria 1997, Abruzzo 2009, Emilia 2012) affected several medieval buildings, such as the Basilica of San Francesco di… Read More Medieval buildings affected by the 1976 Friuli earthquake