Dalla pietrificazione dei poteri alla pietrificazione della ricchezza. Uso funzionale e simbolico della pietra tra Toscana e centro-nord della penisola (X-XII secolo)

The article, centred on stone architecture and the related issue of construction site organization, is divided into five paragraphs. The first comprises a synthesis of the main findings in these fields for the architecture of the 8th and 9th centuries, highlighting how the use of stone is mostly connected to the secular powers that used it mainly for symbolic purposes, employing a number of solutions aimed at evidencing a sort of regularity of the wall surface, also in relation to a general economy of the construction site, that required the adoption of specific choices in production cycles. The second paragraph addresses the case study of the site of Vetricella, the centre of an important royal court, in order to demonstrate that, as late as the end of the 10th century in secular structures, even at sites linked to high-status commissions, the use of wood or mixed materials was still not indicative of either cultural or social choices. In the third paragraph, the individual case study is compared with other examples from central and northern Italy, evidencing how, for much of the 11th century, especially in rural areas, the use of stone in civil constructions, although not stoneworking itself, served to mark out the general layout of sites, thanks also to their more complex design, and the more widespread construction of towers inside their precincts. In religious architecture, on the other hand, it was between the 10th and 11th centuries that the first experiments took place in carefully working more refined stone elements. The fourth paragraph contains a series of observations on a possible circuit of building sites linked to secular and religious structures established between the end of the 10th and the 11th centuries, and characterized by similar choices as well as construction organization. In the last paragraph, using the previously illustrated findings, a more circumscribed period which saw the resurgence of stone building is hypothesized, connected to the Ottonian Age and the policies implemented by the public authorities of the time, with special reference to the March of Tuscia. The fact that, from the second half of the 11th century, secular architecture fell into line with religious architecture, with the same choices regarding stone-working, in bare wall surfaces unadorned by plaster-work, can be seen as the result of the previous construction era, and can be interpreted in terms of the need to represent and project both power and wealth, on the part of the local signeurships.Peer reviewe