Teaching digital archaeology in Italy: still utopia or already reality?
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2020-08-30

This talk will provide an overview of the teaching of Digital archeology in Italy looking at the efforts the Italian Universities have been doing in the past 15 years to align Italian archaeologyprograms to those that are still mainly related to North Europe curricula. While new practices related to the development and adoption of technological tools during archeological investi-gations have profoundly changed the way many professionals and academics approach arche-ological work, this change in Italy is not reflected in teaching practices and has had minimal influence in University programs. A few virtuous examples of courses exist but they are a sheer minority. Reasons for that can be ascribed from one side to the bureaucratic difficulties still encountered in Italy trying to change State-standardised curricula, especially at BA level, and from the other to a resistance in including such topics within a traditional curriculum from a certain type of academia, with the result of confining them to seminars or workshop to which few hours are dedicated. The outcome is that the skills and the competencies that students are equipped  with  when  they  complete  their  University  degrees  can  vary  enormously  from  one  University to another with strong implications on the graduates’ capacity of being absorbed by a job market that looks more and more eager to hire computer-skilled personnel. Alternatives are  (often  expensive)  post-graduate  level  intensive  programs  or,  even  worse,  private  courses  provided by organisations often without necessary knowledge of archaeology.This presentation will provide both an analysis of the Italian situation as a result of a survey and a definition of what digital skills are needed from national students to tackle the job market (especially in the very unique Italian cultural heritage panorama), with an eye on proving useful information for other countries.


Arianna Traviglia