An introduction to "nEAR", a sound installation I realized for Franco Bixio. It has been exhibited at MAXXI Museum in Rome during the photo exhibition "Rino Barillari, The King of Paparazzi" produced by Massimo Spano (Michelangelo Film)... more
An introduction to "nEAR", a sound installation I realized for Franco Bixio. It has been exhibited at MAXXI Museum in Rome during the photo exhibition "Rino Barillari, The King of Paparazzi" produced by Massimo Spano (Michelangelo Film) and Istituto Cinecittà Luce and set up by Martino Crespi.
The megalithic temple on the Rock of Cefalù, known as the name of the Temple of Diana, is a structure of which up to now has not been able to understand the real function. The megalithic temple has a main entrance direct to the west,... more
The megalithic temple on the Rock of Cefalù, known as the name of the Temple of Diana, is a structure of which up to now has not been able to understand the real function. The megalithic temple has a main entrance direct to the west, through which starts a corridor leading to the rocky cistern characterized by a dolmenic coverage. After the first drawings and reliefs between '700 and '800, respectively of Jean Houel and George Nott, the first official archaeological excavations were made by Pirro Marconi in the first half of the twentieth century. These excavations allowed to acquire more informations about the age of the temple and the cistern. The authors have developed the first complete archaeoastronomical study of the building, allowing to find out how the facility would serve as vestibule to the cistern of proto-historic age, and in particular how the megalithic architecture is a real sun temple. The front door of the temple is indeed oriented to the point where the sun sets at the equinoxes. This finding suggests that in these periods of the year the solar hierophany most likely invited to come inside the temple to reach the cistern, where they carried cults and rituals related to water. This study allows the identification of the temple as a Artemision.
The megalithic temple on the Rock of Cefalù, known as the name of the Temple of Diana, is a structure of which up to now has not been able to understand the real function. The megalithic temple has a main entrance direct to the west,... more
The megalithic temple on the Rock of Cefalù, known as the name of the Temple of Diana, is a structure of which up to now has not been able to understand the real function. The megalithic temple has a main entrance direct to the west, through which starts a corridor leading to the rocky cistern characterized by a dolmenic coverage. After the first drawings and reliefs between '700 and '800, respectively of Jean Houel and George Nott, the first official archaeological excavations were made by Pirro Marconi in the first half of the twentieth century. These excavations allowed to acquire more informations about the age of the temple and the cistern. The authors have developed the first complete archaeoastronomical study of the building, allowing to find out how the facility would serve as vestibule to the cistern of proto-historic age, and in particular how the megalithic architecture is a real sun temple. The front door of the temple is indeed oriented to the point where the su...
Thapsos is a settlement located on the Magnisi peninsula, a triangular strip of land between the gulfs of Syracuse and Augusta. Here it developed a remarkable Middle Bronze Culture (1440-1250 BC), with a village with proto-urban character... more
Thapsos is a settlement located on the Magnisi peninsula, a triangular strip of land between the gulfs of Syracuse and Augusta. Here it developed a remarkable Middle Bronze Culture (1440-1250 BC), with a village with proto-urban character for the influence of import and know-how from the Aegean, Cyprus and Malta. The necropoleis of Thapsos are arranged in 3 areas of the peninsula. For our analysis we considered the two groups of rectangular shaft tombs with underground chamber necropolis, widespread on the limestone plateau to the North and South of the peninsula. A first partial study about the orientation of the Thapsos' shaft tombs was realized at the beginning of the third millennium on 25 tombs in the North necropolis; in this first analysis it was observed that there were two privileged orientations: one of astronomical character, linked to the sunrise at the summer solstice, and the other of topographical character, connected to Mount Etna (North direction). The new archa...
The archipelago of the Aeolian Islands is located in the Tyrrhenian Sea, to North of the Sicilian coast. Since 2000 the Aeolian Islands are an UNESCO World Heritage Site. The human presence in the archipelago is attested since very... more
The archipelago of the Aeolian Islands is located in the Tyrrhenian Sea, to North of the Sicilian coast. Since 2000 the Aeolian Islands are an UNESCO World Heritage Site. The human presence in the archipelago is attested since very ancient times (Bernabò Brea, 1958). The prehistoric people were in fact attracted by the presence of large quantities of obsidian, glassy substance of volcanic origin through which the Aeolian Islands were the center of flourishing trade routes (Tusa, 1999). In this paper we analyze the positioning of the prehistoric villages of the Eolian Islands taking into account archaeoastronomy and the aspects of landscape archeology. In particular, the study is aimed at understanding if in the choice of the site used for the construction of the various villages, the profile of eastern or western horizons may have played a determining role or not. Here we present preliminary results of the study made with the satellite data (Google Earth) and data measured by the fi...
The Cassiopeia constellation appears in the sky forming the “M ” mark and the “W ” mark, and this fact has certainly provoked the attention of the ancient shamans. In the rocky picture of Rocca Cavour (3500 B.C. – Piedmont, Northern... more
The Cassiopeia constellation appears in the sky forming the “M ” mark and the “W ” mark, and this fact has certainly provoked the attention of the ancient shamans. In the rocky picture of Rocca Cavour (3500 B.C. – Piedmont, Northern Italy) (Fig.1) the constellation at M size which is above the head of the shaman woman has been identified by archaeologists as “antropomorfo con cappello” that is anthropomorphous with a hat (Barale, 2001). In the euro-asiatic shamanism there is a sky zone in which spirits grow and after they descend from heaven to the earth, as it is said in the “Caldean Oracles”–fragment 115: “..from there it has been sent the soul, covered with intense feeling… ” (Tonelli, 1995). This Trascendence concept appears in the two specular images of Cassiopeia under the breasts of the shaman statuette of Passo di Corvo (5 300 B.C. – Puglia, Southern Italy) (Gimbutas, 1990) (Fig.2). This concept is completed by the two butterflies below, which are symbols of the psyco-pump a...
TURBIDITES OF THE NORTHERN APENNINES: ... This paper was translated in 1975-76 partly as an exer-cise in learning geological aspects of ... It has had great impact on many aspects of geology, includ-ing field mapping, petroleum... more
TURBIDITES OF THE NORTHERN APENNINES: ... This paper was translated in 1975-76 partly as an exer-cise in learning geological aspects of ... It has had great impact on many aspects of geology, includ-ing field mapping, petroleum exploration, lithostratigraphy, biostratigraphy ...
From an outcrop perspective, mass transport deposit are commonly represented by "chaotic" units, characterized by dismembered and internally deformed slide blocks of different sizes and shapes, embedded in a more or less... more
From an outcrop perspective, mass transport deposit are commonly represented by "chaotic" units, characterized by dismembered and internally deformed slide blocks of different sizes and shapes, embedded in a more or less abundant fine-grained matrix. The large amount of data derived from geophysical investigations of modern continental margins have permitted the characterization of the overall geometry of many of these
Mass-transport complexes are herein intended as large-scale chaotic units characterized by dismembered and internally deformed slide blocks embedded in a more or less abundant fine-grained matrix and thought to be produced by large-scale... more
Mass-transport complexes are herein intended as large-scale chaotic units characterized by dismembered and internally deformed slide blocks embedded in a more or less abundant fine-grained matrix and thought to be produced by large-scale submarine sliding. Seismically, these slide deposits have been extensively described from many continental margins and termed “large scale mass transport complexes”; nonetheless they are still relatively poorly known and described from outcrop studies of collisional basins. Results of our studies show that in mass-transport deposits an unsorted, strongly mixed, fine-grained clastic matrix almost invariably occurs in irregularly interconnected patches and pseudo-veins, infilling space between large clasts and blocks. We interpreted the aspect of this matrix as typical of a liquefied mixture of water and sediment, characterized by an extremely high mobility due to overpressured conditions as evidenced by both lateral and vertical injections. On a much...
