Phd in PHD SCHOOL OF ARCHAEOLOGY

email: federica.vacatello@uniroma1.it
phone: +39 3333864177
building: Palazzo di Lettere e Filosofia
room: Piano I, Stanza 16

Federica Vacatello is a Tenure Track Researcher (RTT) in Christian, Late Antique and Medieval Archaeology (ARCH-01/E) at the Department of Classics, Sapienza University of Rome. Since 2024, she has regularly taught in the Master’s degree programmes of the Department of Classics. She teaches Medieval Archaeology of Architecture, within the integrated course Medieval Landscapes and Architecture of the Master’s Degree in Archaeology, and the module Human Migrations, Mobility and Identities in Life and Death – Late Antiquity and Middle Ages, within the international Master’s Degree in Mediterranean Archaeology. Her teaching mainly focuses on the stratigraphic analysis of architecture, medieval building techniques, the transformation of settlements and landscapes between Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, mobility and migration, and the use of topographical and digital methods for the study of post-classical contexts. She has also taught at the Postgraduate School of Archaeological Heritage of the University of Basilicata and has given lectures and seminars for Master’s degree programmes, postgraduate schools and PhD programmes at Sapienza University of Rome and at other Italian and international universities, including the Universities of Milan, Bari, Chieti, Perugia and Lund. She is a member of the Consulta Universitaria delle Archeologie Post-Classiche and, since 2017, she has been responsible for excavation and topographical documentation activities and has directed archaeological surveys in the Tolfa Mountains within the Cencelle Project. Since 2021, she has been responsible for excavation and topographical documentation activities at the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem within the Sapienza Hagia Polis Project. In this context, she coordinates the acquisition and digital management of archaeological data and develops 3D GIS systems for the study of the topographical and architectural transformations of the complex. She also carries out archaeological surveys in Jerusalem aimed at understanding its morphological and urban development and at identifying architectural contexts that can be compared with the Byzantine and medieval phases of the Basilica. Her research mainly focuses on medieval topography, landscape archaeology, post-classical archaeology of architecture, and the development of digital methods for the documentation and archaeological interpretation of post-classical contexts. Her research studies the relationship between the morphology of the territory, settlement forms, road networks, the use of resources, and the transformation of built spaces through methods related to Digital Archaeology. A specific line of her research is focused on the development of technological tools and robotic systems designed for the needs of archaeological investigation in post-classical contexts and landscapes. She has been Principal Investigator of the UAVIMALS project, funded by the National Geographic Society and protected by national and international patents, of the ArcheoSystem project, focused on autonomous robotic documentation of indoor contexts, and of the Telerilevare l’invisibile project, aimed at applying multispectral and colorimetric systems to archaeological research. She is currently Principal Investigator of the V.I.S.I.O.N. – Visual Imaging for Surface Investigation of Old Narratives project, funded by Sapienza University of Rome and aimed at developing a modular hardware and software platform for the integration of LiDAR, GPR, multispectral imaging, SLAM and Artificial Intelligence data.