Nicola Masini

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• Research Director at Italian National Research Council

In many countries of Southern America, Asia and Middle East clandestine excavations affect more than other man-made and natural risks archaeological heritage. Direct and aerial surveillance are not always suitable for protection and monitoring sites of cultural interest. This favoured the use of Very high resolution satellite data for the detection...

The deterioration of stone materials due to atmospheric factors is a growing global concern, affecting the integrity and preservation of numerous UNESCO World Heritage Sites around the world. This study provides an estimate of the long-term impact of the climate on the degradation of carbonate stone materials in the UNESCO site of Matera, in southe...

This study shows and discusses an innovative approach devised for archaeological feature detection using unmanned aerial system (UAS) LiDAR and an open-source probabilistic machine learning framework. The methodology employs a Random Forest classification algorithm within CloudCompare’s 3DMASC plugin to analyse dense LiDAR point clouds. The main st...

This study introduces a methodology for the improvement of the visibility of archaeological features using an open-source probabilistic machine learning framework applied to UAV LiDAR data from the Torre Castiglione site in Apulia, Italy. By leveraging a Random Forest classification algorithm embedded in an open-source software, the approach proces...

This article presents a multiparametric and multiscale methodological approach devised during the COVID-19 pandemic event for the environmental monitoring of artworks housed in a museum. The pandemic event provided the opportunity to analyze the museum environment in the absence of visitors, thus enabling the evaluation of indoor conditions solely...

The Venice Charter explicitly refers to the revealing goal of the conservation. The disciplinary debate and theoretical speculations have made this explicit function in the ability to accompany the reading of the work and make people understand its historical and formal values. In the field of architecture ruins represent an extreme condition: on t...

The conservation and promotion of natural and cultural heritage, including landscapes, constitutes a subject of great economic and social importance. In recent times, there has been an increasing emphasis on the debate around strategies for developing an integrated approach to environmental and cultural heritage. The United Nations Educational, Sci...

The abandonment of inhabited places is a phenomenon widespread on a global scale that has spanned centuries. It has led to the birth of the so-called ‘ghost towns’. These lifeless sites dot the internal Mediterranean and European areas, testifying to the changeability of the human settlements. Through a vision that reverses the paradigm that epitom...

Coastal and underwater archaeological sites pose significant challenges in terms of investigation, conservation, valorisation, and management. These sites are often at risk due to climate change and various human-made impacts such as urban expansion, maritime pollution, and natural deterioration. However, advances in remote sensing (RS) and Earth o...

Several theoretical and applied studies are concerned with the topics of geological heritage management and geoconservation. The diversity of natural and anthropic scenarios into which geological heritage is inserted, as well as its troublesome management, make these topics challenging for scientific discussion. However, on the other hand, these to...

The aim of this work was to assess the potential of Continuous Change Detection and Classification (CCDC) CCDC and trend analysis algorithms on Sentinel 2 NDVI time series (2016-2023) to capture and estimate subtle internal vegetation anomalies, with a focus on disease induced by pests. To explore and characterise long-term vegetation dynamics, Sen...

This study aimed to evaluate the impact of using an AI model, specifically ChatGPT-3.5, in remote sensing (RS) applied to archaeological research. It assessed the model’s abilities in several aspects, in accordance with a multi-level analysis of its usefulness: providing answers to both general and specific questions related to archaeological resea...

The constructive reading of the historical architecture through the study of the published and unpublished sources preserved in the archives, can represent a unique and precious cognitive tool to acquire all fundamental information that constitutes the basis of an aware restoration intervention.Frequently, in case of ancient buildings, reconstruct...

The construction history of a site is partially preserved underground and can be revealed through archaeological investigations, including excavations, integrated with earth observation (EO) methods and technologies that make it possible to overcome some operational limits regarding the areal dimensions and the investigation depths along with the i...

The purpose of this work was to evaluate the potential of Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA) and the Fisher–Shannon method to analyse NDVI MODIS time series and to capture and estimate inner vegetation anomalies in forest covers. In particular, the Fisher–Shannon method allows to calculate two quantities, the Fisher Information Measure (FIM) and the...

Land use and land cover (LULC) strongly influence soil erosion/sediment yield, and predicting changes in soil erosion is an important management strategy. Tracing the Earth’s past also helps us better understand the future evolution of the landscape, but research using modern mapping capabilities is hampered by the scarcity of historical landscape...

In the recent decades, the availability of Earth Observation technologies (from satellite, aerial and ground) for the study and preservation of the human past is stepping into a golden age. The currently available data, tools and services (including open cloud resources to process big satellite data) opened up a new frontier of possibilities and ap...

This paper focuses on the potential of an integrated approach using aerial LiDAR, aerial and terrestrial photogrammetry, terrestrial laser scanning, and archaeological survey to detect the presence and configuration of lost medieval settlements under canopy. This approach was applied to the site of Altanum (Calabria, Italy), on the hill of Sant’Eus...

The aim of this work is to set up an HBIM (Heritage Building Information Model) system to facilitate the planning of diagnostic and restoration activities by bringing all archive information into a digital platform, accompanied by three-dimensional models that can be consulted and examined. Frequently, in case of ancient buildings, reconstruct the...

This paper deals with a UAV LiDAR methodological approach for the identification and extraction of archaeological features under canopy in hilly Mediterranean environments, characterized by complex topography and strong erosion. The presence of trees and undergrowth makes the reconnaissance of archaeological features and remains very difficult, whi...

Even today, and certainly in the past, the infrastructures built by Inca engineers appear extremely complex, even in their almost perfect geometric and harmonic articulation. The imposing structures incorporating stone blocks weighing several tons seem beyond the reach of men, whose level of technology never reached the Iron Age. Stone was undoubte...

In recent decades, the availability of Earth Observation technologies for cultural and natural heritage is stepping into a golden age characterized by an increasing growth of both classical and emerging technologies for the study, documentation and preservation of the human past, archaeological landscape and environment. This work focuses on the us...

The ITACA Mission of the CNR, in collaboration with the University of Warsaw and the PIAISHM from 2017 to 2019, conducted for the first time in Machu Picchu an interdisciplinary survey project aimed at exploring the subsoil for archaeological purposes with remote sensing and geophysics. Excavations carried out by the PIAISHM in 2016 opened new ques...

In this paper, we focus on the environmental and physiographic settings of Machu Picchu which is undoubtedly the result of advanced environmental engineering techniques. The Machu Picchu park is very rich in habitats and species diversity and preserves remarkable endemic and relict flora and fauna and for these reasons unanimously considered of glo...

Earth Observation (EO) Big data have emerged in the past few years providing opportunities to improve and/or enable research and decision support applications with unprecedented value for digital CH and archaeology.The currently available digital data, tools and services with particular reference to Copernicus initiatives make possible to character...

Imaging radar has been dramatically developed over the past decades enabling a better understanding of cultural heritage from a microwave perspective. Nonetheless, a dedicated survey and analysis of the performance of such technology in cultural heritage monitoring and management is required. In order to fill this gap, we first review the technolog...

The increasing availability of multiplatform, multiband, very-high-resolution (VHR) satellite synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data has attracted the attention of a growing number of scientists and archeologists. In particular, over the last two decades, archeological research has benefited from SAR development mainly due to its unique ability to acq...

Humidity is one of the most frequent causes of damage to the architectural heritage. An effective and non-invasive way to detect the presence of humidity and identify the possible causes, from capillary rise to infiltration and condensation, is infrared thermography. The paper shows and describes the results from terrestrial and UAV-based (Unmanned...

This paper is focused on the archaeological area of Metaponto (Mexomov-nov) and its territory, located in southern Italy. The area played an important role for the agricultural economy and the traffic of goods and people, from the south of Italy towards the central regions, starting from the Neolithic period, and reaching the zenith with the Greek...

This paper deals with the integration and fusion of UAV-based imagery, including Vis-NIR multispectral and infrared thermography data, with georadar and geomagnetic prospecting, applied on Grumentum, pre-Roman and Roman city, with an important phase dated to Late Antiquity, of the ancient Lucania, in Basilicata region. The data were processed indiv...

Illegal archaeological excavations, generally denoted as looting, is one of the most important damage factors to cultural heritage, as it upsets the human occupation stratigraphy of sites of archaeological interest. Looting identification and monitoring are not an easy task. A consolidated instrument used for the detection of archaeological feature...

Knowledge and management of areas with various cultural and natural assets represent both a challenge and an opportunity: a challenge, since it is not so trivial to analyse and to correlate different assets in the same geographic area, and an opportunity, since it represents a chance for scientific cooperation, communication, and dissemination of a...

Ghost Town: abandonment versus regeneration in the frame of human and territorial resilience

The Heritage Within (HWITHIN) European Research Project aimed to develop an innovative approach to present buildings and archaeological ruins. The project proposed to implement state-of-the-art technologies to produce an innovative visualization of the cultural heritage by showing what is hidden to our naked eye and the unknown, nonvisible features...

The Middle Ages have been traditionally considered a crisis period due to the demographic decrease and economic deterioration occurred in Western Europe. Nevertheless, the historical reconsideration has been focused not only on decline and decay, but also on resilience and recovery which characterized the Europe of the fourteenth and fifteenth cent...

Italy holds the international record for Cultural Heritage and Unesco sites’ number but, in the face of this wealth, a number of criticalities emerge as it cannot be a mere passive location; Cultural Heritage needs protection, conservation and valorization through direct interventions such as restoration and maintenance, and indirect interventions...

Recent developments in VR and AR (Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality) applications have opened up multiple paths of knowledge and visualization. State-of-the-art applications take advantage of the availability of real-time 3D models characterized by increasing complexity. At the same time, non-real-time forms of visualization have evolved, these...

Unmanned aerial vehicles are currently the most used solution for cultural heritage in the field of close range and low altitude acquisitions. This work shows data acquired by multitemporal and multispectral aerial surveys in the archaeological site of San Vincenzo al Volturno (Molise, Italy). The site is one of the most important medieval archaeol...

By analysing the technical advantages and characteristics of imaging radar in cultural heritage, we provide new insights for the future development of cutting-edge Digital Heritage approaches through technical integration and interdisciplinary synergy.

Looting is the major source of artefacts for the antiquities market. Specific measures are needed to fight the whole chain of the illicit activities undertaken by criminal organizations (from the excavation to the selling of the artefacts), and they should be devised for each phase of such illegal activities. The development and use of appropriate...

The literature in the field of archaeological predictive models has grown in the last years, looking for new factors the most effective methods to introduce. However, where predictive models are used for archaeological heritage management, they could benefit from using a more speedy and consequently useful methods including some well-consolidated f...

In recent years, the impact of Climate change, anthropogenic and natural hazards (such as earthquakes, landslides, floods, tsunamis, fires) has dramatically increased and adversely affected modern and past human buildings including outstanding cultural properties and UNESCO heritage sites. Research about protection/monitoring of cultural heritage i...

The currently available tools and services as open and free cloud resources to process big satellite data opened up a new frontier of possibilities and applications including archeological research. These new research opportunities also pose several challenges to be faced, as, for example, the data processing and interpretation. This letter is abou...

The church of San Francesco della Scarpa is a church in the historic center of Lecce (Southern Italy), so called in the 16th century when the minor friars who lived in the destroyed convent of Santa Maria del Tempio were divided into conventual and observant: the former wore shoes unlike the seconds. The church has had static stability problems in...

In the field of the conservation of cultural heritage, non-invasive tests often represent the only way to monitor the conservation state of monuments and work of arts. Ground penetrating radar (GPR) plays a fundamental role in identifying and assessing the presence of failures and degradation affecting cultural heritage. This paper deals with the u...

The authors wish to make the following corrections to this paper [1]: Due to mislabeling, replace: Figure 6Typical Neolithic settlements in the Tavoliere delle Puglie: (a) settlement of Masseria Schifata; (b) settlement of Passo di Corvo [36] [...]

Cultural heritage is a key element of our history. The ancient monuments and archaeological sites enrich our societies and help us to connect to our cultural origins. Many processing techniques showed high potential for monitoring and evaluating settlement induced damage to critical structures and specifically to cultural heritage. An increase in t...

The use of satellite radar in landscape archaeology offers great potential for manifold applications, such as the detection of ancient landscape features and anthropogenic transformations. Compared to optical data, the use and interpretation of radar imaging for archaeological investigations is more complex, due to many reasons including that: (i)...

Most of the artistic heritage in the Mediterranean basin is hosted in rupestrian hypogeum whose peculiarity is given by the presence of at least one open side, which makes them particularly sensitive to meteorological conditions. This makes mandatory the monitoring of both indoor and outdoor environmental parameters to analyze the cause–effect rela...

One of the most complex challenges of heritage sciences is the identification and protection of buried archaeological heritage in urban areas and the need to manage, maintain and inspect underground services. Archaeology and geophysics, used in an integrated way, provide an important contribution to open new perspectives in understanding both the h...

This paper is focused on the use of satellite Sentinel-2 data for assessing their capability in the identification of archaeological buried remains. We selected the "Tavoliere delle Puglie" (Foggia, Italy) as a test area because it is characterized by a long human frequentation and is very rich in archaeological remains. The investigations were per...

In recent years, very high-resolution satellite remote-sensing tools have been progressively used in archaeological prospecting to acquire information and improve documentation. Satellite remote sensing has also benefited from technical improvements, including better spectral and spatial resolution of sensors, which have facilitated the detection a...

This book investigates the added value that satellite technologies and remote sensing could provide for a more sustainable mapping, monitoring and management of heritage sites, be it for purposes of regular maintenance or for risk mitigation in case of natural or man-caused hazards. One of the major goals of this book is to provide a clear overview...

Cultural heritage is the creative expression of a people’s presence in the past. It represents a driving force to create, develop, and consolidate the sense of identity, belonging, and citizenship, as well as a means to appreciate the diversity of people and develop a policy for peace and mutual understanding. Furthermore, heritage is a source of e...

Archaeological and cultural heritage (ACH), one of the core carriers of cultural diversity on our planet, has a direct bearing on the sustainable development of mankind. Documenting and protecting ACH is the common responsibility and duty of all humanity. It is governed by UNESCO along with the scientific communities that foster and encourage the u...

The abandonment of inhabited places is a phenomenon that concerns many countries worldwide and Italy particularly where a large number of deserted settlements are hosted. Many are the factors driving and conditioning the abandonment of a site, such as natural extreme events (e.g. earthquakes, landslides, and floods) and/or human (not) actions. Once...

Illegal excavations represent one of the main risks which affect archaeological heritage throughout the world. Actions oriented to quantify damage and prevent looting can be supported by satellite technologies which can provide reliable information to detect and map devastation phenomenon in particular for remote or non-accessible sites. In these c...

Digital data is stepping in its golden age characterized by an increasing growth of both classical and emerging big earth data along with trans- and multidisciplinary methodological approaches and services addressed to the study, preservation and sustainable exploitation of cultural heritage (CH). The availability of new digital technologies has op...

This paper provides an overview on the application of satellite synthetic aperture radar (SAR) technology in archaeology. The growing developments of space SAR technologies in terms of observational capabilities (spatial, spectral, radiometric, and temporal coverage) had made the use of these technologies very attractive for archaeological investig...

This study provides an evaluation of spectral responses of hollow ways in Upper Mesopotamia. Hollow ways were used for the transportation of animals, carts, and other moving agents for centuries. The aim is to show how the success of spectral indices varies in describing topologically simple features even in a seemingly homogeneous geographic unit....

Remote sensing, nowadays, is one of the main technology used in the field of cultural heritage, thanks to its non-invasiveness in a such a delicate subject of study[1]. Thanks to the improvement and creation of new sensors, it is used in many study cases that varies from conservation analysis in monuments[2], frescoes[3], rose-windows[4], wall pain...

Aerial survey is one of the most effective non invasive methods for the archaeological prospection Historically, aerial photography has been the first remote sensing tool extensively used for digital archaeology for surveying emerging archaeological remains as well as for detecting underground archaeological structures through the reconnaissance of...

Abstract Through time, the large ceremonial centers of the Peruvian pre-Hispanic coast have played an important role as Pachacamac, renowned for its famous oracle, which was an important site for cult and pilgrimage, where the use of water entered largely into ritual functions during Inca age and before. The sanctuary’s landscape included sea, vall...

This paper deals with the approach used to create the digital cultural heritage map (hereafter, c.h.) of the mountain village of Cancellara and its territory, located in Basilicata, Southern Italy. The map is thought to be an exhaustive georeferenced catalogue of sites of cultural interest to bring fresh insights and new life to the c.h. and suppor...