Lucia ARCIFA
Lucia Arcifa is Associate Professor of Christian and Medieval Archaeology (L-ANT/08) at the Department of Education Sciences, University of Catania. Since 2023 she has held the Italian National Scientific Qualification for Full Professor in Medieval History and Archaeology (Sector 10/A1).
Her research focuses on the archaeology of Sicily and Byzantine Southern Italy between Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, with particular emphasis on settlement dynamics, frontier societies, defensive systems, communication networks, ceramic production and exchange, resource management, and landscape archaeology. She has directed and coordinated numerous archaeological field projects and interdisciplinary research initiatives, integrating archaeological evidence, written sources, archaeometric analyses, and GIS-based spatial modelling. She collaborates extensively with international institutions, including the École française de Rome, and has played a leading role in major research projects on the medieval Mediterranean.
My research focuses on the early medieval Mediterranean, with particular emphasis on Arab-Byzantine frontier issues and settlement dynamics, especially in early medieval Byzantine and Islamic Sicily. I am currently directing the excavation of Rocca di Novara (Novara di Sicilia - ME), a Byzantine kastron dating from between the 9th and 10th centuries, which offers a fascinating insight into the militarised society of Byzantine Sicily and its various cultural components.