Mario INDELICATO
Tutor: Daniele MALFITANA
Mario Indelicato, is a classical archaeologist and experimental archaeologist: to earn his Master's degree, he supervised the project "Archaeology of wine in Italy: a Sicilian experiment"; a work of experimental archaeology that aimed to reproduce and experimentally verify the techniques of planting a vineyard in the Roman world.
In order to obtain a Postgraduate Diploma in Classical Archaeology, at the School of Specialization in Archaeological Heritage of the University of Catania, he supervised the project "Cultivating the Vine, Producing Wine: an experimental and multidisciplinary approach to the study of wine archaeology in Roman Sicily." In this study find place the census of the archaeological heritage of the Mascali (CT) plain, and the continuation of the work in the experimental "Roman" vineyard planted there. The work is accompanied, then, by the development of an experimental winemaking protocol according to Roman oenological techniques. He is involved in other experimental archaeology projects particularly related to the production of tools and instruments useful for winemaking in the ancient world.
From April 2018 to October 2019, he was a research fellow at IBAM-CNR within the SPIDEr (Strategies for Planning and Integrated DEvelopment of Urban Cultural Contexts) Project.
He has participated in numerous excavation and reconnaissance campaigns, both archaeological and geophysical; he has taken part in international conferences, curating, among other things, the organization of the 5th Conference of Young Archaeologists.
Finally, he has edited and composed a number of scientific articles and posters in the field of experimental archaeology.
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Ph.D. research project
Archaeology of wine and oil production in Hellenistic-Roman Sicily
The research project aims to examine wine and oil production in Hellenistic-Roman Sicily, that is, the period of maximum productivity of these commodities on the island. Focus of the project are the production structures that can be documented archaeologically: presses, millstones, crushers, tanks etc. etc. The research methodology, will be that peculiar to landscape archaeology, and aims to reconstruct - thanks to a close synergy between data collection and geospatial analysis using GIS tools - not only the territory surrounding the farms but, in a regional macro-scale, will try to derive from the identified sites, useful data for the reconstruction of the volumes of production and trade of these commodities. To complement the topographical data, in the central phases of the project, archaeological experimentation will be used, involving the reconstruction of a number of artifacts in order to investigate their operation and understand the production logic, calculating the production volumes of individual sites.
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Other activities during the Ph.D.
Mario Indelicato is, since December 2021, a Research Fellow at the Institute of Cultural Heritage Sciences of the National Research Council (ISPC-CNR) within the framework of the self-funded reuse of resources for research grants and is involved in the study of ceramic materials from various archaeological contexts in eastern Sicily of the Hellenistic-Roman period.
From December 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021, he was a Research Fellow of the Institute of Cultural Heritage Sciences of the National Research Council (ISPC-CNR) under the research program Project POR 1.1.5 "CLOUD4CITY".
On January 20, 2021, he participated as a speaker in the Webinar "Catania: the ancient city and the city of the future" organized by ISPC-CNR as part of the Technic project.
In October 2021, he participated in Vine-growing and Winemaking in the Roman World. An international conference in honor of Jean-Pierre Brun with a paper entitled: From vinea to vinum: experimental archaeology to study Roman viticulture and enology.
Since 2022, as a Lecturer in SSD L-ANT/10 he has delivered several seminars at UNICT and lectured as part of the Bachelor of Arts in Cultural Heritage and Master of Arts in Archaeology courses.
He was a member of the Executive Board of the second edition of the International Conference CHAIN, organized May 18-20, 2022 by the PhD students in Heritage Sciences and Cultural Production at DISUM.
Since 2014 (to date) he has been in contact with EXARC (European Exchange on Archaeological Research and Communication) the world's largest experimental archaeology network through which he participated in Experimental Archaeology Conference 9 (EAC9, 2015) Dublin and EAC11 (2019) in Trent presenting in the poster and papers related to the project of studying viticulture and enology in the Roman world.
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- Fabiana Cerasa, Federico Fazio, Mario Indelicato, Lucrezia Longhitano, Dal dato al contesto. TeCHNIC, la ricerca multidisciplinare al servizio della città, in D. Malfitana, A. Mazzaglia “Catania: la città antica e quella del futuro. Per una gestione del patrimonio archeologico urbano”, Catania c.d.s.
- Mario Indelicato, Il vino “mascalese” di Columella: un esperimento archeologico, in «Città di Mascali: Quaderno di Studi II», Mascali 2021, pp. 105-125.
- Mario Indelicato, From vinea to vinum: experimental archaeology to study Roman viticulture and enology in D. Van Limbergen, E. Dodd, M. S. Busana Vine-growing and Winemaking in the Roman World. An international conference in honour of Jean-Pierre Brun., Roma c.d.s.
- M. Harutyunyan, M. Malfeito Ferreira, M. Indelicato, Linking esperimental archeology and winemaking: from the dig to the winery, in The Handbook of Roman Wine Archaeology: New data, methods, and scientific approaches, Bloomsbury, in press.
- D. Malfitana, A. Mazzaglia, F. Cerasa, M. Indelicato, L. Longhitano, G. Meli, S. Vinci, Storytelling and gamification strategies for cultural heritage enhancement. The experience of AUGUSTUS Project, in Heritage Alive, Catania, 14-15 Dicembre 2021.
- F. Cerasa, M. Indelicato, L. Longhitano, La ricerca archeologica per la gamification: personaggi, trame e contesti, in G. Fazio, D. Malfitana, S. Fricano, A. Mazzaglia, E. Bonacini, Digital Cultural Heritage e serious game: l’esperienza del progetto AUGuSTUS, Palermo 2022, pp. 45-71
- M. Indelicato, La crisi silenziosa: distruzione e rinascita della viticoltura mediterranea, in Chain 2022 – Crisis and Cultural Heritage Proceedings, in press.
- D. Malfitana, A. Mazzaglia, F. Cerasa, M. Indelicato, L. Longhitano, Apprendere (video)giocando. Patrimonio culturale e gamification nell’esperienza del progetto AUGuSTUS, in Heritage Education. Comparing practices and experiences Proceedings, in press.
- D. Malfitana, A. Mazzaglia, F. Cerasa, M. Indelicato, L. Longhitano, Da OpenCity a TeCHNIC. Progettualità e tecnologie per una topografia antica di Catania come strumento di conoscenza, tutela e pianificazione urbana, in Cronache di Archeologia, Volume di studi in onore del prof. Edoardo Tortorici, Catania c.d.s.