Large scale urban Geophysical Prospection: the Rome Transformed Project 2019-2024.

The purpose of this short report is to inform ISAP members of a new large-scale geophysical prospection project that is being undertaken in Rome. In October 2019 Newcastle University, together with the British School at Rome (BSR), Università degli Studi di Firenze and the Italian Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) were successful in a funding bid to the European Research Council for a project aimed at investigating the Caelian Hill in Rome (https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/835271). The project aims to improve our understanding of Rome and its place in cultural change across the Mediterranean World by mapping political, military and religious changes to the Eastern Caelian Hill from the first to the eighth centuries. It will assess the buildings that drove these changes, producing academically robust visualisations, appropriately contextualised. Building upon the 3D recording work conducted at St. John Lateran Basilica (Haynes et al, 2018), the survey will expand eastward towards the Basilica of The Holy Cross in Jerusalem, including a large stretch of the Aurelian walls, Republican tombs and the Claudian aqueduct.