Scavo e Scuola a Tarquinia. Internazionalizzazione e formazione a difesa della fragilità di un sito UNESCO

In the framework of this conference Tarquinia offers a number of topics for discussion, from fragility to internationalisation, in addition to a consolidated and systematic presence of researchers from the University of Milan, since 1982. They have attracted interdisciplinary initiatives and scholars from Universities and research institutes scattered throughout Europe and the world. Today the ancient Etruscan city, buffer zone of the UNESCO site (2004), i.e. the necropolis of painted tombs, is threatened by various geomorphological phenomena and by the risk of abandonment by active research, due to the current legal-administrative conditions, which hinder its usual development. However, the continuity of research offers support of this two-faced fragility. It is based on a consolidated tradition and is constantly renewed, with obvious advantages for the UNESCO site, which is always to the attention of the world community . The Tarquinian territory represents one of the fields in which the interdisciplinary collaboration is immediately highly profitable, especially focusing on its complete and defined overview , through the recent acquirements of topographic research (LiDAR, GIS, geophysical prospections) combined with the archaeological. This includes a thorough study of how the ancient city is inserted in the current town plan and in the development plans of the territory: the rules of archaeological, environmental and landscape safeguard of the UNESCO Buffer zone are different as regards the use of the land. However, if on the one hand it is right to think in terms of agricultural development and productivity for a territory that is so fertile and rich in environmental and naturalistic attributes, this must be done taking into account the real limits and the objective extension of the Etruscan metropolis, whose immense buried archaeological potential is as yet little known.