Archaeology, Geomorphology and Palaeosurfaces Studies: a Multidisciplinary Approach for Understanding the Ancient Laos Territory

This paper describes the results of the project ‘Landscape archaeology in the territory of ancient Laos’, a collaboration between the Superintendency of Calabria, the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, the Centre Jean Bérard in Naples (USR 3133 CNRS – École Française de Rome) and the Department of Heritage Science of University of Salerno. The aim of the project, started in 2009, is to understand the ancient landscape dynamics in the coastal area of northern Calabria. In the last two centuries the landscape has been deeply modified by human contemporary activities. In this context many archaeological evidence persist in a chaotic framework. In such circumstances we defined a multidisciplinary research strategy. In particular a geomorphological and pedo-stratigraphical approach was applied to the archaeological survey. The information was used to build matrix-profiles aimed at the analysis of influencing factors regarding the presence of archaeological evidence on investigated surfaces.