The cycle of online meetings On the Trails of the Place of the Carlo Scarpa Prize 2020-2021 continues, organized by the Benetton Studi Ricerche Foundation (Benetton Foundation
Research Centre) on the Zoom platform, to explore various issues and topics related to the International Carlo Scarpa Prize for the Garden, the prize for a place dedicated, in its
31st edition, extraordinarily biennial, to Güllüdere and Kızılçukur: the Valley of Roses and the Red Valley in Cappadocia, while waiting for the reopening, at the Ca’ Scarpa headquarter
in Treviso, of the exhibition Cappadocia. The landscape in the lap of the rock, temporarily closed in relation to the current health situation.
On Thursday 21st January at 6:00 pm, Roberto Bixio, Andrea Bixio and Andrea De Pascale, researchers of the Centro Studi Sotterranei (Underground Studies Center) of Genoa, experts
in artificial cavities, since 1985 engaged in several missions in rock settlements in Asia Minor, will talk about hydraulic systems and anthropogenic cavities in the Cappadocia
underground, describing, for example, the functioning of the cistern tunnels, identified following the most recent investigations carried out in the Göreme site.
One of the fundamental elements that must be taken into consideration in the investigation of ancient settlements – they say – is the availability of drinking and irrigation water
and, consequently, the hydrography of the sites and the relative structures of collection, transport, conservation and distribution adequate to the needs at the time of the sites’
frequentation. This important aspect is today well documented for several areas of the Near and Middle East, as well as of the Central Asia.
Nevertheless, as far as Cappadocia is concerned, very few sources are available. Only in recent times, specific investigations undertaken by the Centro Studi Sotterranei of Genoa, in
addition to a short research by Alexandra V. Bukarenko, and further investigations by Eric Gilli and Ali Yamaç, have revealed the presence on the Cappadocian territory of
underground water systems of remarkable ingenuity and efficiency, in tune with the techniques of building “in negative” peculiar to this region.
Finally, on Thursday, January 28 at 6:00 p.m., Maria Andaloro, art historian, director of the Mission of the University of Tuscia in Cappadocia, Giuseppe Romagnoli,
medieval archaeologist, University of Tuscia, and Natalia Rovella, geologist, University of Calabria, will talk about their research on the landscape of Cappadocia, and in particular
about Geology, Archaeology and Art in the rocky village of Şahinefendi.
All the meetings are curated by the coordinators of the activities of the Carlo Scarpa Prize, Patrizia Boschiero and Luigi Latini, and the speeches will include the sharing of
photographs and other documentation on the topics proposed by the speakers, who have also collaborated in various ways to the collective volume Güllüdere e Kızılçukur: la Valle delle Rose e la
Valle Rossa in Cappadocia. Carlo Scarpa International Prize for the Garden 2020-2021, edited by Patrizia Boschiero and Luigi Latini, Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche-Antiga (Treviso
2020).
*****
Zoom Platform.
To participate in the meetings you must register through the appropriate link published on social channels and on the website of Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche, www.fbsr.it.
Subscribers will receive via email the Zoom link to take part.
Notes on the speakers.
Andrea Bixio, speleologist of the Centro Studi Sotterranei of Genoa; photographer, topographer, computer programmer for the missions conducted in Turkey by the Centro Studi Sotterranei,
under the auspices of the Turkish Ministry of Culture, General Directorate of Antiquities.
Roberto Bixio, speleologist of the Centro Studi Sotterranei of Genoa; honorary inspector for Archaeology, Artificial Cavities sector, of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities
and Tourism (mibact); since 1991 he has been responsible for the missions of the Centro Studi Sotterranei in Cappadocia (central Turkey), Ani, Ahlat and Bitlis (eastern Turkey). In 2019 he was
awarded an honorary degree by the National University of Architecture of Armenia for his commitment to research on rock settlements.
Andrea De Pascale, speleologist of the Centro Studi Sotterranei of Genoa; archaeologist for the missions conducted in Turkey by the Centro Studi Sotterranei, under the auspices of the
Turkish Ministry of Culture, General Directorate of Antiquities. In Italy he is conservator of the Archaeological Museum of Finale (International Institute of Ligurian Studies, Finalese
section) and advisor of the Italian Institute of Prehistory and Protohistory.
