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ABSTRACT
In Italian classical archaeology, the defi nitive adoption of
the stratigraphic excavation method occurred later than in
other European countries. This methodological shift took
place in Italy in the 1970s.
We aim to scrutinize some points of the established
historiographical reconstruction. We focus on three
scholars regarded as “key fi gures” in the birth of Italian
stratigraphic archaeology, yet all of the fi rst half of the
twentieth century, Giacomo Boni, Nino Lamboglia, and
Luigi Bernabò Brea. We examine the origin of their strati-
graphic approach and thus their relationship with prehis-
toric research. This is also an opportunity to refl ect upon
the conceptual and methodological transfer from one
type of archaeology to another.
In general, through comparison of these scholars, we
aim to highlight some key factors in the establishment of
a stratigraphic method in the history of archaeology.
1. INTRODUCTION
In Italian classical archaeology, the widespread adoption
of the stratigraphic excavation method oc curred later than
in other European countries. Th is methodological shift
took place on a large scale in Italy only in the 1970s and
had its fi rst coherent formulation in a handbook published
in 1981 (Carandini 1981) ( 1).
The same period saw an in-depth historiographical
examination of the methods and practices of excavation
in Italian classical archaeology, highlighting, for exam-
ple, how excavations were rarely followed directly by
the archaeologist, how the archaeological deposit was
perceived as an obstacle, and how excavation was seen
as an operation to «liberate» the monuments from this
obstacle. Each site was considered a unique case, and
thus no methodological standards could be formalized.
Th e excavation of Ostia Antica, carried out between 1938
and 1942 with two archaeologists and 150 workers, was
probably the most striking case, wi th its «brutal» removal
of 18 hectares of Late Antique layers (Manacorda 1982a;
1982b; 1982c; 1983; D’Errico & Pantò 1985; Barbanera
2015, 161-167).
This disregard for excavation methodology, and
therefore for stratigraphy, has been correctly attributed to
the aesthetic approach of most Italian archaeologists. As
noted, “there is a close link between the history of ex-
cavation technique and the particular way of conceiving
archaeology and the ancient” (D’Agostino 1981, 18, our
translation).
We a im here to scrutinize some points of the estab-
lished historiographical reconstruction. We focus on three
scholars regarded as “key fi gures” in the birth of Italian
stratigraphic archaeology in the fi rst half of the twenti-
eth century: Giacomo Boni, Nino Lamboglia, and Luigi
Bernabò Brea. We examine the origin of their stratigraph-
ic approach and thus their relationship with prehistoric
research. In thi s sense, our presentation is also an oppor-
tunity to refl ect on the conceptual and methodological
transfert from one type of archaeology to another.
In general, through comparison of these scholars, we
aim to highli ght some key factors in the establishment of
a stratigraphic method in the history of archaeology.
2. GIACOMO BONI
Giacomo Boni (1859-1925) (Fig. 1) was the fi rst classical
archaeologist in Italy to attach importance to stratigraphi-
cal excavation. Trained as an architect, Boni worked at
the young age of 22 in the great restoration of Piazza San
Marco in Venice. His fi rst stratigraphic section known to
us is a watercolor of the foundations of Palazzo Ducale
THE EMERGENCE OF STRATIGRAPHIC
ARCHAEOLOGY IN MEDITERRANEAN EUROPE.
THE ITALIAN CASE-STUDY (1900-1950)
Alessandro Guidi & Massimo Tarantini
2Acta Archaeologica
(Guidobaldi 2008), painted in 1881-82 (Fig. 2). Three
years later, he published a section of the foundation wall
of the bell tower of San Marco (Fig. 3) which demon-
strated how, contrary to the opinion of many scholars, the
foundation levels were vertical, made with stones and pil-
ings (Boni 1885). It is impossible not to see the diff erence
between these two sections.
What happened in the three years that separate them?
How did Boni execute the technique of strat igraphic
drawing so well, showing at the same time the relation-
ship between layers and medieval structures?
Many hypotheses were proposed:
1) According to his biographer, Eva Tea (Tea 1932),
Boni acquired the method after seeing a stratigraphic sec-
tion shown by the prehistorian Gaetano Chierici in a con-
ference held in Venice in 1881 (Chierici 1881). We can
admire this section (Fig. 4), with its relationships between
layers and structures, but we can also observe a great dif-
ference of style.
2) Boni, being a personal friend of John Ruskin and
well-known in the Neo-Gothic circle of British architects
and artists, learned the technique of stratigraphic draw-
ings from them. This idea is held by, among others, Hen-
ry Hurst (Hurst 2008), who notes that, when Boni met
Ruskin for the fi rst time, Ruskin was travelling with his
pupil W.G. Collingwood, who was studying geology of
the Alps at the time and published in 1884 a section (Fig.
5); again it’s possible to perceive that the style is rather
diff erent.
3) According to Ghirardini, who wrote an essay on the
history of early Italian archaeology in 1912, Boni derived
this technique from Wilhelm Dörpfeld’s drawings of his
excavations at Olympia (Ghirardini 1912). But we know
that Boni met Dörpfeld only sometime after 1885, during
a journey in Greece.
All of t hese hypotheses help us to grasp the multiplic-
ity of factors that explain Boni’s new focus, but all of
these assumptions are also limited to showing his theo-
retical acquisition of stratigraphy, not his practice of it.
We can now propose a fourth explanation.
Thanks to the kindness of Andrea Paribeni, we have
seen in the printer’s proofs of the catalogue of the Boni
archive, preserved in Milan (Paribeni & Guidobaldi,
in press), a notebook dated 1885 in which Boni cites a
section made by Pietro Saccardo, an engineer who, like
Boni, worked in the “Fabbrica di San Marco” in Venice.
This section was published by Camillo Boito in his 1880
book Architettura del Medioevo in Italia (Boito 1880;
Fig. 6) to refute William Morris’ idea, a founder of the
Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings in 1879,
that the church was built on a stratum of mud and canes:
«Now precisely the opposite fact is demonstrated: the
robust platform of elm is surmounted by a double bed of
heavy oak or durmast oak planks, and this is in turn sur-
mounted by fi ve courses of a gray stone, called ‘Muggia
stone’» (2).
A comparison with Boni’s 1885 section shows many
analogies, even in the style of drawing. So we can sup-
pose that Boni’s attention to stratigraphy and to the re-
lationships between building structures and layers, was
connected above all with his work environment. In this
context, the nineteenth-century training of engineers
seems to have special signifi cance: as a matter of fact,
geology had an important place in the Italian Applied
School for Engineers (3).
When Boni became director of the Roman Forum ex-
cavations in 1898, he successfully applied this technical
Fig. 1. Giacomo Boni next to one pozzo grave from the Forum graveyard.
After Iacopi 2003.
3
The Emergence of Stratigraphic Archaeology in Mediterranean Europe
skill to the complex stratigraphies of monuments like the
Lapis Niger or the Comitium (Fig. 7). In the latter case,
we can appreciate the stages of development thanks to
the discovery of the preparatory drawing (Capodiferro &
Fortini 2003; Fortini & Taviani 2014) (Fig. 8).
In 1901 Boni published Il metodo negli scavi archeo-
logici (Boni 1901), in which he describes the importance
of sections:
«Sections help to determine clearly the number and
the quality of the layers to be explored, as well as the
character of the materials composing each individual
layer, and this knowledge is of great aid when excavation
must then take place on a large scale» (4).
In another passage he explains the utility of pits and
holes for the understanding of stratigraphy:
«It is advisable to use trenches derived from previous
excavations for initial exploration, if possible, in which
case the walls have to be cleaned vertically until the strat-
ifi cation of the soil appears» (5).
Finally, Boni emphasizes the need to excavate fol-
lowing the contours of the archaeological layers: «Once
the layers were identifi ed, all that remained was to study
them according to their natural arrangement» (6).
Boni also gives practical and useful advice, like the
need to reveal the full extent of the top surface of a stra-
tum, to proceed by excavating a single stratum in its en-
tirety, to evaluate the soil, to preserve with every artifact
an indication of its provenience, and to take soil samples.
Today we can defi ne this brief text as the fi rst modern
excavation handbook, which is frequently forgotten in
many histories of our discipline!
Surely another element of excellence in Boni’s exca-
vations is the creation of plans and sections of the graves
found in the protohistoric necropolis of the Roman Forum
(Fig. 9).
Italian archaeology was (and sometimes still is) an ar-
Fig. 2. Giacomo Boni, stratigraphical section of Palazzo Ducale foundations,Venice. After Guidobaldi 2008, Fig 5.
4Acta Archaeologica
Fig. 3. Giacomo Boni, stratigraphical section of San Marco bell tower in Venice. After Boni 1885.
Fig. 4. G. Chierici, cumulative section of the Sant’Ilario D’Enza site. After Chierici 1881.
5
The Emergence of Stratigraphic Archaeology in Mediterranean Europe
Fig. 5. Analysis of a part of Savoy Alps by Collingwood. After Hurst 2008.
Fig. 6. Pietro Saccardo, stratigraphical section of southern facade of San Marco in Venice. After Boito 1880.
6Acta Archaeologica
Fig. 7. Giacomo Boni, Comizio in Roman Forum, stratigraphical section.
After Boni 1913.
Fig. 8. Preparatory drawing for Fig. 7 section. After Capodiferro &
Fortini 2003, Fig. 30.
chaeology of graves, so it’s not strange that we can fi nd
similar sections also in the work of other scholars before
Boni, as in the case of the tombs discovered near Narce
by Pasqui and his équipe in 1890 (Fig. 10) (7). Probably
also Orsi learned to use a similar techniques in the docu-
mentation of tombs, what can be seen in the section of a
grave found in Gela, published in 1906 (8) (Fig. 11).
It is very diffi cult to fi nd similar accuracy in the ar-
cheological documentation of the following decades, ex-
cept for the Paleolithic excavations led overall by Gian
Alberto and Carlo Alberto Blanc (9): a good exception is
a section of a Greek pit made in 1907 by Angelo Mosso
(Fig. 12) (10), a scholar who is all too often overlooked.
3. NINO LAMBOGLIA AND LUIGI
BERNABÒ BREA
Despite its importance, Boni’s research did not launch a
school of thought. The relevance that is ascribed to his
methods today is in large part the fruit of a posteriori
historiographical salvage work.
Nino Lamboglia (1912-1977) (Fig. 13), though
equally isolated on the academic level, was nevertheless
able to launch a school of thought (Gandolfi 1998; 2004;
Paltineri 2007). As many others have already highlight-
ed, with his excavations at the small city of Albintimili-
um (modern Ventimiglia, on the French border) between
1938 and 1940, Lamboglia executed the fi rst modern
7
stratigraphic investigation of a Classical-era urban site
in Italy (Fig. 14). Lamboglia subsequently formalized his
methodological principles (Lamboglia 1955) and went
on to infl uence much archaeological work in the west-
ern Mediterranean, partly thanks to the organization of
numerous didactic excavations in Italy and abroad: for
example, the courses held at Ampurias in Spain starting
in 1947, the importance of which for the introduction of
the stratigraphic method in Spanish archaeology has been
well stressed (Tròcoli 1993; Diaz-Andreu 2007; 2012,
266-277); or the courses held by the Istituto Internazion-
ale di Studi Liguri at Bordighera, that were in the 1960s
the ‘gym’ for the generation that afterwards spread the
stratigraphic method in Italy (Carandini 1985) (Fig. 15).
Luigi Bernabò Brea (1910-1999), who was closely
linked with Lamboglia, likewise worked in western Lig-
uria at almost the same time (1940-1942), conducting
the fi rst large-scale stratigraphic excavation of a recent
prehistoric site, the cavern at Arene Candide, which im-
mediately became a milestone for Neolithic archaeology
in the central Mediterranean (Guilaine 2003; for general
overview, see Pelegatti & Spadea 2004) (Fig. 16-17).
Bernabò Brea then applied his excavation method in Sic-
ily, where he served as Superintendent of Antiquities for
30 years (1941-1973), and in Greece, at Poliochni. In Sic-
ily he excavated, among others, both multi-layered sites
occupied from prehistory through the Classical era, such
as the acropolis of Lipari and urban areas of the Clas-
sical-era. He often relied on international collaboration:
to give just some examples, the excavation of Camarina
with Princeton University and the Swedish Academy in
Rome represented by Erik Sjöqvist and that of Megara
Fig. 9. Giacomo Boni, stratigraphical section of Tomb C, Roman Forum graveyard. After “Notizie degli Scavi di Antichità” 1903.
The Emergence of Stratigraphic Archaeology in Mediterranean Europe
8
Hyblea with the École Française de Rome represented
by George Vallet. In short, in the words of Michel Gras,
Bernabò Brea “left a mark on archaeological research in
the Mediterranean” in its chronological and geographical
extension (Gras 2004, 51).
Lamboglia and Bernabò Brea both derived their
stratigraphic method from direct contact with Paleolithic
research. In fact, the Italian Institute of Human Paleon-
tology (IIHP) had been operating since 1928 in western
Liguria, at Balzi Rossi (Tarantini & Parenti 2011). Stra-
tigraphy was rigorously analyzed, and even the sedimen-
tation conditions of the deposits were noted and analyzed
with petrographic and geochemical methods. The strati-
graphic analysis was accompanied by sieving of the en-
tire deposit and collection of even the smallest fragments
of artifacts and ecofacts (charcoal and faunal remains,
including micromammals and malacofauna).
Unpublished archival data (Graziosi archive in Flor-
ence) indicate that Lamboglia came into contact with the
IIHP at least in 1936; in 1937 he described his research in
Liguria, explaining:
«The stratigraphic excavation method is the great
conquest of paleontological and paleoethnological sci-
ence [....] it is a severe method, in which nothing is lost
Fig. 10. Enrico Stefani, drawing of a stratigraphical section of La Petrina
tomb XIII. After Tabolli 2014.
Fig. 11. Stratigraphical section of three tombs in Gela-Borgo graveyard
excavated by Orsi. After Pelagatti 1991.
Fig. 12. Stratigraphical section of the excavation made by Angelo Mosso
in a Greek pit at Festos, Room 18. After Cultraro 2014.
Acta Archaeologica
9
Fig. 13. Nino Lamboglia, at the center with glasses, in 1958. After
Gandolfi 1998.
Fig. 14. Albintimilium. General view of the second excavation campaign
in 1939. After Lamboglia 1950.
Fig. 15. Ventimiglia. Nino Lamboglia with some students of the Istituto
Internazionale di Studi Liguri in 1961. After Gandolfi 1998.
Fig. 16. Luigi Bernabò Brea during a congress in 1962. After Pelagatti
& Spadea 2004.
and the excavator’s concern is no longer the collection
of the interesting and rare object, but its position in the
deposit and its relationships with the soil enclosing it and
the objects surrounding it» (Lamboglia 1937, 16).
In the introduction to his publication on Albintimil-
ium, Lamboglia wrote that with that excavation he had
wanted to «perform an experiment, and if possible perfect
the method. We moved away from the usual procedures
of Classical, monumental archaeology in order to apply
Fig. 17. Arene Candide. Bernabò Brea – Cardini excavation in 1940-42.
After Bernabò Brea 1946.
The Emergence of Stratigraphic Archaeology in Mediterranean Europe
10
Fig. 19. Luigi Cardini at Balzi Rossi in 1938. Source: Florentine Museum of Prehistory, Graziosi Archive.
Fig. 18. Arene Candide: a 1940 section of the Neolithic layers. After Bernanbò Brea 194.
Acta Archaeologica
11
The Emergence of Stratigraphic Archaeology in Mediterranean Europe
the methods of prehistoric archaeology to history» (Lam-
boglia 1950).
The IIHP also had a direct infl uence on Bernabò Brea.
He had doubtless become aware of the importance of ex-
cavation methodology thanks to the earlier excavations in
Greece at the Athenian school of Alessandro Della Seta
in 1936-37. This awareness drove him, upon becoming
Superintendent of Antiquities of Liguria in 1939, to re-
quest the support of the IIHP for the launch of a rigorous
excavation of a cave at Balzi Rossi (in the words written
by A. C. Blanc to Luigi Cardini, the ‘technician’ charged
with overseeing the excavation, Bernabò Brea requested
«that we [IIPH] guide him at the beginning, remaining at
the site for approximately one week» (11)). Bernabò Brea
said that Cardini «was truly a past master, not so much
in the offi ce as in the fi eld [....] and a large group of Ital-
ian paleoethnologists, starting with this author, owe their
education to him» (Bernabò Brea 1972, 600) (Fig. 18).
The infl uence of prehistoric cave excavation meth-
odology on Lamboglia and Bernabò Brea is evident
foremost in their appreciation of sections, which were
regularly drawn on site maps. These were not cumulative
sections, but rather drawings of sections made visible by
excavating in adjacent trenches (Paltineri 2003) (Fig. 19-
20). Furthermore, Lamboglia and Bernabò Brea both paid
attention to the formation process of stratigraphy, which
they followed naturally along its contours even where ir-
regular in inclination and thickness. And they considered
sedimentology, not only to evaluate formation process-
es, but also to correlate strata, demonstrating generally
speaking a conception of stratum very close to the geo-
logical concept of facies (Paltineri 2007). They numbered
the strata, of course, and labeled the artifacts according to
the stratum in which they were found.
Finally, the infl uence of the IIHP is evident in the ex-
plicit choice of Lamboglia and Bernabò Brea to collect
all of the “palaeoecological” elements in the excavation,
from fauna to charcoal, with the aim of reconstructing
the relationship between humans and landscape (Gan-
dolfi 2004, 173). This aspect deserves a separate discus-
Fig. 20. Albintimilium. General section of the “Room V”. After Lamboglia 1950.
12 Acta Archaeologica
sion. We stress only that in 1931 Gian Alberto Blanc had
expressed a wish that prehistory would borrow from «a
much broader fi eld, that of ecology» (Blanc 1931, 16),
stating that the objective of research should be knowledge
of « the environment in which human activity took place »
(Blanc 1928, 366).
But the fact that Lamboglia and Bernabò Brea were
receptive to the stratigraphic excavation method depend-
ed on the questions to which they subjected the archaeo-
logical documentation, confi rming that excavation meth-
odology is closely correlated with the excavator’s gen-
eral understanding of archaeology. As pointed out by G.
Eberhardt (2008, 91), “the procedure of digging is shaped
by the data is considered to be important”.
For both Lamboglia and Bernabò Brea the strati-
graphic approach was, in fact, inseparable from the typo-
logical study of pottery. Stratigraphy and ceramic typol-
ogy together became the indispensible tool for creating
the basis of relative chronology in archaeology of all
periods, from prehistoric to medieval. It is worth recall-
ing that the excavations at Albintimilium led to the fi rst
fundamental typology of Roman pottery and that the pub-
lication of Arene Candide excavations was immediately
considered a «date capitale pour l’histoire de la poterie»
(Arnal & Benazet 1951, cit. in Coye 2001, 234). As has
been noted, this attention to pottery also led to a specifi c
rationalization of post-excavation activities, with particu-
lar emphasis on the organization of the fi nds depot. Two
photographs well demonstrate the similarity between
Lamboglia’s depot at Ventimiglia and Bernabò Brea’s at
Lipari (Gandolfi 2004, 191-192) (Fig. 23).
4. CONCLUSION
The comparison between fi eld activities of Boni, Lam-
boglia and Bernabò Brea seems to point out three signifi -
cant aspects for the history of the emergence of a strati-
graphic approach in archaeology:
1) First of all, the stratigraphic method, in the practice
of these scholars, had a unifying function for prehistoric,
Fig. 21. Albintimilium. A detail of the relationship between layers and a wall foundation. After Lamboglia 1950, Fig. 33.
13
The Emergence of Stratigraphic Archaeology in Mediterranean Europe
classical, and medieval archaeology; Lamboglia clearly
wrote that «the stratigraphic method has no time limits»
(Lamboglia 1964-65, 107). Not by chance all of them
engaged with multiple chronological periods, applying
this approach even to medieval levels well before medi-
eval archaeology was defi ned (for Lamboglia, see Var-
aldo 1998 & Paltineri 2003; for Boni, see Augenti 2000;
for Bernabò Brea, see e.g. Bernabò Brea 2002). Here we
can also mention Paolo Orsi (Gelichi 1997, 33), perhaps
the best example of that working method which Mar-
cello Barbanera defi ned as “careful excavation” (= scavo
dell’attenzione: Barbanera 1998, 31 & 82).
2) For these scholars, prehistoric archaeology repre-
sents a reference, even at various levels, in the develop-
ment of the stratigraphic method. Naturally, this explana-
tion is not, and cannot be, unambiguous. Bernabò Brea,
for example, sought the collaboration of the IIHP because
he was already aware of the need for stratigraphic archae-
ology thanks to his experience of archaeological excava-
tions at the Italian School at Athens under the direction of
Alessandro Della Seta. Lamboglia was familiar with the
excavations carried out in Central Europe along the Ro-
man limes (Manacorda 1982b, 104-105). And Boni, who
was an architect, demonstrated the role of the unexpected
stratigraphic sensitivity of engineers. Further evidence of
a certain autonomy among architects in recognizing the
importance of archaeological stratigraphy comes from
the fact that Lamboglia was invited to teach a course on
excavation methodology at the School of Architecture in
Rome, rather than in a faculty of Archaeology (Pallarès
1977).
Another episode highlights for us the non-linearity
of certain stages in knowledge: Gian Alberto Blanc,
mentioned earlier, trained in the fi eld with the Institut
de Paléontologie Humaine in Paris (Tarantini & Parenti
2011). Yet Blanc himself recalls his earlier experience
with Boni and his visits to Boni’s Roman excavations
(Blanc & Blanc 1958-59), which could not have failed to
contribute to his non-academic training as an archaeolo-
gist (Blanc was a physicist).
3) The third and fi nal consideration concerns the in-
stitutional affi liations of these scholars, all of them em-
ployed at State archaeological heritage offi ce. None of
them had a university career; on the contrary, some of
Fig. 22. The Lamboglia storage depot at the Ventimiglia Antiquarium (on the left) and the fi rst offi cial storage depot of Lipari Museum. After Gandolfi
2004.
14 Acta Archaeologica
them were met with resistance by the academic establish-
ment (for Boni and Orsi, see Augenti 2000, 44). Similar
situations applied to other scholars (Paolo Orsi above
all) who practiced fi eld archaeology at a high level at the
same time. This simple observation furthermore helps
to explain why the methods of stratigraphic archaeol-
ogy did not immediately launch a school of thought in
the practice of Italian Classical archaeology: universities
were (and are) the main location of the transmission of
knowledge. This episode perfectly exemplifi es the weight
of institutions in the history of archaeology.
At the same time, the institutional affi liations of
Boni, Lamboglia, Bernabò Brea, and Orsi demonstrate
the potentialities created by the professionalization of
the position of archaeologist as defi ned in the context
of Italian state administration, and they delineate the
unexpected possibilities for experimentation that were
available within the state archaeological heritage offi ces
(12).
NOTES
(1) For the delay of the complete acquaintance of the
stratigraphical method in Italian Classical archaeology it
would be suffi cient to remember that Archaeology from
the earth by M. Wheeler (surely a source of inspiration
for Carandini) had been published almost thirty years ear-
lier (Wheeler 1954).
(2) “Ora il fatto mostra ch’è per l’appunto il contrario:
alla robusta palafi tta di olmi sovrasta un doppio letto di
assoni di quercia o rovere, e a questo sovrastano cinque
scaglioni d’una pietra grigia, detta pietra di Muggia”
(Boni 1901, 310).
(3) See also, especially for the years in which Boni
worked in Venice, Favaretto & Pilutti Namer 2016.
(4) “Le sezioni giovano a ben determinare il numero e
la qualità degli strati da esplorare, nonché il carattere dei
materiali componenti ogni singolo strato, e questa con-
oscenza è di sommo aiuto quando lo scavo deve poi farsi
su vasta scala” (Boni 1901, 7).
(5) “E’ consigliabile utilizzare, se possibile, per le
esplorazioni iniziali, le fosse derivanti dagli scavi prec-
edenti, nel qual caso bisogna ripulire in senso verticale
le pareti, fi nché la stratifi cazione del terreno apparisca”
(Boni 1901, 10).
(6) “Identifi cati gli strati, non restava che studiarli,
secondo il loro giacimento naturale” (Boni 1901, 13).
(7) Tabolli 2014 (drawing from Fondo Barnabei).
(8) See Pelagatti 1991, Fig. 3A. Paolo Orsi (1859-
1935) was certainly the “father” of the archaeology of
South Italy and Sicily making surveys and excavating,
practically, all the major prehistoric and archaic towns
and graveyards of these territories.
(9) It is important to remember that Alberto Carlo
Blanc knew very well Boni, who between 1895 and 1897
worked near the villa of his father Gian Alberto; a touch-
ing memory of this experience and of the fi rst important
discoveries in the Forum constitutes the introduction of a
paper written in 1958 by Gian Alberto and Alberto Carlo
Blanc on the cattle remains found in the favissa under the
Lapis Niger (Blanc & Blanc 1958-59).
(10) This section was published only in 1935 by
Pernier, but it’s based on data collected by Mosso and
from drawings made on the fi eld following his sugges-
tions by Enrico Stefani (M. Cultraro, pers. comm.).
(11) Alberto Carlo Blanc to Luigi Cardini, 14 Octo-
ber 1940 (Florentine Museum of Prehistory, Graziosi Ar-
chive, II B4).
(12) A fi rst version of this contribution has been pre-
sented at the International Conference held in Rome on
October 20-21st, 2016 and organized by the Histories
of Archaeology Research Network (HARN) and by the
Swedish Institute of Classical Studies in Rome.
We are happy to present the fi nal version in a volume
dedicated to Klavs Randsborg, a true expert in the history
of ideas about the past.
The paper is a result of the joint work of the two au-
thors; the section on Boni is written by A. Guidi and that
on Lamboglia and Bernabò Brea by M. Tarantini.
All the quotations from Italian texts are our transla-
tions.
15
The Emergence of Stratigraphic Archaeology in Mediterranean Europe
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Addresses of authors:
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Massimo Tarantini, MIBACT,
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