Prehistoric and protohistoric archaeology

Sapienza university offers a unique variety of subjects in prehistoric studies, spanning from palaeolithic to protohistoric periods, thus covering 3 million years and more than 90% of the human past, in different parts of the world, from Africa to Europe and the Mediterranean, through Western Asia. With the first teaching position in Palaeoethnology - entrusted by Sapienza to Luigi Pigorini in 1877 - the outstanding Roman tradition in prehistoric research and teaching was born. From the second half of the twentieth century, the unique impulse to such studies in Rome is due to distinguished scholars such as Salvatore Maria Puglisi, Renato Peroni, Alba Palmieri, Fabrizio Mori. Teaching is today firmly grounded and based on an extremely rich field practice with long term decennial excavation and research projects (for example, Arslantepe, Coppa Nevigata, the Acacus) and more recent projects in Italy, Africa and southwest Asia, equally central in the issues they tackle: hominization, impact of the environment on prehistoric groups and communities, domestication and sedentarisation, origin of pottery production and technological development, origin of inequality and state societies. All such projects pose particular attention today on issues of community involvement, conservation and valorisation of cultural heritage. Students at the School may both benefit from the fact that teachers are actively involved in the mentioned research projects and that the archives of such projects are held at Sapienza.

The specific courses of the Prehistoric and protohistoric archaeology curriculum attribute 20 of the 40 CFU of the area 1 "Knowledge and contextualisation of archaeological heritage" to the courses of the following scientific-disciplinary sectors (SSD):

L-ANT/01 Preistoria e Protostoria
GEO/01 Paleontologia e Paleoecologia
BIO/08 Antropologia

The remaining 20 CFU are to be chosen within the SSDs of the other curricula.