GIS and Land History: the documentation of the ancient Aosta Dukedom

GIS technology has been recognised as one of the best instruments able to join and relate data coming from different disciplines involved in a documentation process of Cultural Heritage objects. The RecorDIM (Recording, Documentation and Information Management) project defined some general rules to be followed when GIS technology is used to share documentation results among all the possible users (e.g. conservators, restorers, land planners, etc.). The aim of the paper is to show a real application of the proposed rules inside an Interreg III-A (community initiative seeking to favour the harmonious and even development of European territory by encouraging cross-border cooperation) ALCOTRA (Alpi Latine COoperazione TRAnsfrontaliera) project managed by the Italian Valle d'Aosta Region. The Valle d'Aosta Region assigned to the Politecnico di Torino research group (teachers of the High School on Cultural Heritage and Landscape) the goal of placing the results of the archaeological and historical investigations inside a not structured GIS files. This particular approach will allow the integration of the collected data in the regional GIS used for land planning and land risk assessment. This approach required a planning of the recording strategies adopted by the different specialists involved in the project and the structuring of the collected data in a way that could allow the dissemination of the results among all the land planners at every scale (from regional scale up to urban scale). The proposed approach will allow an easy and direct access to the results of historical and archaeological investigations to the specialists involved in the plan of future landscapes and land uses