Edilizia religiosa cristiana nell'Italia meridionale fra il IV e l'XI secolo. Lo stato degli studi e le prospettive di ricerca nell'ambito del progetto del Corpus Architecturae Religiosae Europeae

The archaeological study of Late Roman and Early Medieval Christian buildings does not enjoy, in Suothern Italy, a long-standing tradition. For most of the 20th century Christian buildings from this historical period have been mostly studied from an architectural and art-historical point of view. In a land where some of the most celebrated sites of the Classical world have been brought to light, archaeologists have not payed much attention to the remains of the post-classical period. Quite the opposite, when the latter have interfered with the former, very often they have just simply been removed, making it impossible to understand, for example, that Greek temples from Paestum and Selinunte had been turned into churches in Late Antiquity. The actual beginning of church archaeology in Southern Italy goes back not earlier than the beginning of the last decade of the 20th century, when medieval and christian archaeologists have actually started to work together, within a wider and more complex idea of building a proper landscape archaeology. The essay therefore re-examines more or less one hundred and twenty years of research trying to recognize and describe the most important scholars and research groups who have operated in Southern Italy, from different perspectives and with different tools, towards the construction of a scientifically reliable knowledge of the Christian heritage dating back to Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages.