The study develops a geological/geotechnical model of the filling of the buried Tiber River valley in the area of Rome. The approach has been multidisciplinary: the fill sediments have been analysed in detail and are given on a cross section based on either the observations of 57 borehole cores and/or the laboratory tests on various types of samples. Information regarding the geology, geomorphology, climate, hydrographic network, urban development and history of the Rome area has been used to interpret this section and to extrapolate the data to the historical centre of Rome in order to formulate the model. The proposed model is a global forecasting rather than a detailed one and can be used as a starting point for projects to be conducted in the Tiber River alluvium or for defining a specific approach to technical problems linked to these projects

This study reports on the discovery that the podium of the archaic temple in the Forum Boarium of Rome was built with a previously unknown tuff, of non-local origin. On the basis of detailed comparative petrographic and geochemical tests, it has been established that the blocks employed to build the earliest temple so far discovered in Rome belonged to a distinctive facies of tufo lionato that had never been characterized before, in contrast to what was reported by previous excavators. The blocks must have come from a quarry in the Anio River Valley, several kilometers from the construction site, making the Sant'Omobono temple the earliest known Roman building that extensively employed imported materials. The metrology of the blocks is also unique. This particular volcanic stone was probably chosen for its much greater resistance to weathering compared to the local tuffs, a trait that was essential in the flood-prone location, not far from the Tiber riverbank, where the temple was situated. The labor-intensive sourcing may also explain the dainty size of the temple podium in comparison to other sixth-century bc temples in the region. The choice made by the builders indicates far greater sophistication and technical awareness than they have generally been credited with. The new discovery is placed in the context of the quickly accumulating archaeological record of sixth-century bc Rome, which suggests a dramatic increase in the number and scale of monumental projects in the expanding city.

The Pietra dell'Oglio bridge is the only Roman infrastructure that crosses the Ofanto River between Mirabella Eclano (Aeclanum in Campania) and Venosa (Venusia in Basilicata), just near the border between Campania and Basilicata. The bridge was built on a substrate consisting of the stable middle Miocene Cerreta-Bosco di Pietra Palomba Sandstone (ACP) and where the Ofanto River valley is narrower. The current state of the bridge shows that 18 architectural and structural elements are original, 12 were restored, 1 was modified, 4 were reconstructed, and 4 were added in the last century. The original architectural and structural elements (ASEs) are built by the technique of opus quadratum and opus incertum using the pebbles of the Ofanto River and ashlars of phytoclastic travertine and ACP Sandstone cemented by very hard mortar. The opus incertum technique and its use for many bridges in Italy and France suggest that the Pietra dell'Oglio bridge was built between the II and I century BC at the service of a very important public road. The present research is allowed to identify the Pietra dell'Oglio bridge with the Pons Aufidi related to the old Appian Way layout between Mirabella Eclano and Venosa and contributes to improving the knowledge of Roman bridge engineering, particularly in Campania.

The coastal M. Paci rock-avalanche occurred on February 6 1783, near the village of Scilla (southern Calabria). This landslide produced a tsunami wave responsible for more than 1500 losses in the neighbour Marina Grande beach. On the basis of subaerial and submarine surveys a 5 . 10(6) m(3) subaerial landslide has been identified together with a 3 . 10(6) m(3) submarine scar area, while block deposits are present both in the subaerial and in the submerged region. A geomechanical characterization of both the intact rock and the rock mass widely outcropping in the landslide slope were performed and a map of the rock mass classes was obtained. Three different equivalent continuum approaches has been applied in order to evaluate the jointed rock mass stiffness in the landslide area. A 3D engineering-geology model of the subaerial part of the M. Paci landslide has been obtained by merging the collected geomechanical and geological data

No abstract