Themes and Reflections upon Structural Analysis in the Field of Archaeology

This paper proposes some useful reflections upon a common and conflicting debate, which is the one between the needs and solutions for the conservation and protection of cultural heritage. The development of new mathematical tools can nowadays make it possible to work in a direct and non-invasive way and help to overcome the exclusive classification of the formal characteristics of a building. Furthermore, it allows archaeologists to identify and classify the technical characteristics of a structure with greater precision, towards a point of view aimed at an overall reconstruction of its construction phases. The case studies presented in this contribution aim to draw up problems and conditions that new tools could help to solve. Some of them may be related to checking the load of structures with respect to the bearing capacity of the ground, or to the analysis of the progressive load variations regarding different geometries from the original projects. Finally, such new tools can be useful for predictive analysis of the structural response to exceptional events such as earthquakes and landslides. The main goal of this paper is to create a bridge between experience and knowledge, useful for a real protection of historical buildings, and far from the limits of disciplinary research.