The Baths of Indirizzo in Catania represent one of the best preserved thermal buildings in the Roman Empire. The goal of this research is twofold and concerns the determination of the date of the monument construction and of its last use. For these purposes, brick samples were collected at specific points of the baths, in order to date them by thermally stimulated luminescence. On this occasion we present some partial results and the study carried out for the optimization of the measurement protocol on historical terracotta.

Recent excavation carried out at the Nuragic site of Sant’Imbenia (Alghero-Sardinia) brought to light a considerable number of transport amphorae. The archaeometric and archaeological study allowed us to trace the identikit of these vessels, on the basis of technological and typological aspects. The paper is concentrated on the amphorae found in the hut 47, because they clearly illustrate the diversified production of these vases.

In the courtyard of the Episcopal palace Oria (a village located few kilometers at north-west of Brindisi) a Doric capital and a drum of the fifth century BC column (Classical period) from the ancient Acropolis Messapica are conserved. Also in Oria in the early medieval church of Gallana, about three kilometers from the Acropolis, there are two other Doric capitals, this time dating back to the Hellenistic period (fourth and third centuries BC). Starting with the measures of the moldings detected on the site and using the form (that is, the lowest common denominator of the relative sizes of the various architectural elements of a temple of the classical era and later Hellenistic period), the remaining measures were obtained which, the height of the column, the diameter of the same lower end and the height of the entablature of the two religious buildings in Puglia aged messapica.

An innovative portable Raman system (exc. wav. 1064 nm) for safe molecular characterisation of pigments and other photosensitive materials has been developed and successfully tested. It was equipped with a novel probe, which has been designed and built in order to perform Raman scattering measurements on a relatively large area homogeneously irradiated at laser intensities lower than the typical ones needed using commercial instruments. Besides a set of original optical solutions providing improved efficiency, the instrument has also been equipped with an active thermal control line, which allows to prevent alterations of the material under study and to optimize the measurement cycles by means of suitable modulations of the laser power. Comparative tests of the novel analytical tool with an alternative setup equipped with a commercial Raman probe were carried out on a set of pure pigments and oil paint layers, which allowed assessing the higher measurement efficiency and reliability of the former with respect to the latter.

A territory, with its distinctive cultural patrimony effectively linked to the technological capabilities and grounded in the socio-economic context, constitutes a territorial system seemingly to a large-scale facility. This work illustrates the vision statement of a new model of territorial system recently launched, the Cultural Heritage Open Laboratory System (CHeLabS), aiming at the construction of this favorable context. The cultural asset (CH) is at the centre of this system, that addresses the challenge of a CH-driven development in science and technology. CHeLabS is thought as a scalable and distributed laboratory based on the Open Access and Sharing culture. The implementation of its current phase, consisting in a participated survey, is here described.