Per un corpus dei mosaici di Aquileia: status quo e prospettive future

This paper presents an ongoing research project about the mosaics from Aquileia, directed by the Department of Archaeology of the University of Padua, in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture - Friuli Venezia Giulia Archaeological Office, and sponsored by Assicurazioni Generali. This project aims to produce a comprehensive corpus and a systematic analysis of all mosaics documented in Aquileia. The outcome will be the publication of the first complete corpus of the entire mosaic production of the site. This project is integrated in the digital database Tess, created and managed by the Department of Archaeology of the University of Padua, which includes the residential buildings of the Cisalpine area as well as floor revetments of the whole Italian peninsula. The use of relational databases, which enable the coding of a high number of contexts with the respective mosaics (without dismissing other important features, such as the building techniques, or the pictorial decoration), offers new perspectives of historical analysis of the coded data. In this optic, the site of Aquileia is an ideal research object, due to its richness and internal variety. This paper displays the first results of the creation of the catalogue, mainly focusing on the housing contexts, characterized by the highest number of occurrences. On the base of these results, we will shed light on: the distribution of the housing contexts, the quality and quantity of the mosaic surfaces; the percentage of the revetment techniques, the relation between geometrical and figurative decorations and, finally, on the chronology. Moreover, as a sample of the whole sie, we will focus on a single area, i.e. the northern district of the city (including the houses of Tarsia marmorea, Calendio e Iovina, Licurgo e Ambrosia, Corridoio, Tre cortili, Pavimenti in cotto and the Republican House). We will analyze several aspects, such as the typologies of both the domus and the mosaics; the relations between the decoration and function of the room; the relations between figural representations and architecture; the elements attesting the taste of the commissioners and the chronology.