Fotografie aeree, tracce archeologiche e lavorazioni agricole: conoscenza e necessità di interventi di tutela. Il caso di Ferento (VT)

This paper concerns the systematic study of the aerial photos regarding the area of the Medieval and Roman city of Ferento (Province of Viterbo). The available data set is very rich, spanning about 85 years from 1937-1938 to today. From the 1960s, aerial photography had a fundamental role for the reconstruction of the orthogonal road network recently dated to the Augustan age, in particular in the eastern sector of the city, where no structures of the Medieval period were superimposed on the Roman ones and no remains stand on the ground surface. Some very recent aerial photos, taken from 2013, show an exceptional number of crop, dump and soil-marks, documenting many buried archaeological remains. They lie in an area where intensive farming is practised without specific restriction. Therefore, the buried ancient remains have a high risk of destruction, such as in every archaeological area where agricultural works are performed without restrictions. As an alternative to the absolute prohibition of cultivation, a possible solution to this problem is proposed in this paper, i.e. the sod seeding, which safeguard the soil and the buried structures.