Nicola Masini (born 1965) is an Italian scientist with CNR, noted for his work on exploring traces of

Andean civilizations The Andean civilizations were South American complex societies of many indigenous people. They stretched down the spine of the Andes for from southern Colombia, to Ecuador and Peru, including the deserts of coastal Peru, to north Chile and no ...

Peru Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pac ...

and

Bolivia Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in central South America. The country features diverse geography, including vast Amazonian plains, tropical lowlands, mountains, the Gran Chaco Province, w ...

using spatial technologies and

Remote Sensing Remote sensing is the acquisition of information about an physical object, object or phenomenon without making physical contact with the object, in contrast to in situ or on-site observation. The term is applied especially to acquiring inform ...

Biography

He graduated in Engineering in 1990. He became Researcher with the

Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche The National Research Council (Italian: ''Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, CNR'') is the largest research council in Italy. As a public organisation, its remit is to support scientific and technological research. Its headquarters are in Rome. ...

in 1995, Senior scientist at CNR-IBAM in 2003, Research Director of CNR-Institute of heritage Science in 2020, Professor of Fundamentals of Restoration at the

University of Basilicata The University of Basilicata (), colloquially known as ''Unibas'', is an Italian public research university located in Potenza, with a satellite campus in Matera. It was founded in 1982, and is organized in six faculties (two schools and four de ...

since 2002, Editor in Chief of

Heritage Heritage may refer to: History and society * A heritage asset A heritage asset is an item which has value because of its contribution to a nation's society, knowledge and/or culture. Such items are usually physical assets, but some countries also ...

. His dominant scientific interest is the application and the development of new approaches to archaeological research by integrating satellite

remote sensing Remote sensing is the acquisition of information about an physical object, object or phenomenon without making physical contact with the object, in contrast to in situ or on-site observation. The term is applied especially to acquiring inform ...

LiDAR Lidar (, also LIDAR, an acronym of "light detection and ranging" or "laser imaging, detection, and ranging") is a method for determining ranging, ranges by targeting an object or a surface with a laser and measuring the time for the reflected li ...

and geophysical prospecting. He has been directing Italian Conservation heritage and Archaeogeophysics Mission in Peru since 2007. From 2007 to 2015, he has been directing several scientific investigations at the Nasca ceremonial center of

Cahuachi Cahuachi, in Peru, was a major ceremonial center of the Nazca culture, based from about in the coastal area of Peru's central Andes. It overlooked some of the Nazca lines. The Italian archaeologist Giuseppe Orefici has been excavating at th ...

Pachacamac Pachacámac () is an archaeological site southeast of Lima, Peru in the Valley of the Lurín River. The site was first settled around A.D. 200 and was named after the "Earth Maker" creator god Pacha Kamaq. The site flourished for about 1,300 ye ...

Tiwanaku Tiwanaku ( or ) is a Pre-Columbian archaeological site in western Bolivia, near Lake Titicaca, about 70 kilometers from La Paz, and it is one of the largest sites in South America. Surface remains currently cover around 4 square kilometers and in ...

Machu Picchu Machu Picchu is a 15th-century Inca citadel located in the Eastern Cordillera of southern Peru on a mountain ridge at . Often referred to as the "Lost City of the Incas", it is the most familiar icon of the Inca Empire. It is located in the ...

, Chankillo, Kuelap, and a number of archaeological sites in the Nasca Province and Lambayeque region. The most remarkable achievements of the ITACA Mission are the discovery of a settlement on the riverbed of the Nasca (2008), a number of findings in some of the Cahuachi temples (2008-10), the monitoring of archaeological looting in South and North Peru (2011), and study of the ancient channeling in

(2012-14). Nicola Masini, investigating some geoglyphs in Pampa de Atarco near the Ceremonial center of Cahuachi contributed to providing a new hypothesis on the Nasca lines. The research conducted between 2013 and 2015, using remote sensing, along with Giuseppe Orefici and Rosa Lasaponara, put in evidence a spatial, functional, and religious relationship between these geoglyphs and the temples of Cahuachi. Since 2013, he has been chief advisor of a research project with the

Chinese Academy of Sciences The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS; ) is the national academy for natural sciences and the highest consultancy for science and technology of the People's Republic of China. It is the world's largest research organization, with 106 research i ...

Henan Henan; alternatively Honan is a province in Central China. Henan is home to many heritage sites, including Yinxu, the ruins of the final capital of the Shang dynasty () and the Shaolin Temple. Four of the historical capitals of China, Lu ...

(China) focusing on the use of digital space technologies for archaeological investigations and the management of cultural resources. He is currently conducting investigations using satellite imagery, including SAR, to identify unknown sites and routes along the old

Silk Road The Silk Road was a network of Asian trade routes active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century. Spanning over , it played a central role in facilitating economic, cultural, political, and religious interactions between the ...

. Since 2005, in Southern Italy, he has been conducting some remote sensing-based investigations on medieval settlements abandoned in the Late Middle Ages. In 2018 using

he enabled to discover a fortified settlement under the canopy in North of

Basilicata Basilicata (, ; ), also known by its ancient name Lucania (, , ), is an administrative region in Southern Italy, bordering on Campania to the west, Apulia to the north and east, and Calabria to the south. It has two coastlines: a 30-kilometr ...

. Finally, between 2017 and 2019, investigations carried out at

allowed the reconstruction of the landscape before the construction of the Inca monumental complex.

Current research

His scientific interest centers on the application and development of methodologies for the conservation of cultural heritage and archaeological research. His interdisciplinary approach draws on spatial technologies, non invasive diagnostics, and geophysics in a holistic vision that brings together history,

archaeology Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...

, and conservation

Scientific books and papers

Books

* Lasaponara R., Masini N. (Eds) 2012, Satellite Remote Sensing: a new tool for Archaeology, Springer, Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, . * Lasaponara R., Masini N., Orefici G. (Eds). The Ancient Nasca World New Insights from Science and Archaeology. Springer International Publishing, 2016 * Masini N., Soldovieri F. (Eds), Sensing the Past. From artifact to historical site. Springer International Publishing, 2017. * Ziolkowski M., Masini N., Bastante J. (Eds). Machu Picchu in Context. Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Human Past. Springer International Publishing, 2022

Papers

* Masini N., Lasaponara N., Orefici G. 2009, ''Addressing the challenge of detecting archaeological adobe structures in Southern Peru using QuickBird imagery'', Journal of Cultural Heritage, 10S, pp. 3–9. * Lasaponara R., Masini N., Rizzo E., Orefici G. 2011. ''New discoveries in the Piramide Naranjada in Cahuachi (Peru) using satellite, Ground Probing Radar and magnetic investigations'', Journal of Archaeological Science, 38, 2031–2039, https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2010.12.010 * Lasaponara R., Masini N. 2014. ''Beyond modern landscape features: New insights in the archaeological area of Tiwanaku in Bolivia from satellite data''. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 26, 464–471, https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2013.09.00. * Masini N., Orefici G. et al. 2016. ''Cahuachi and Pampa de Atarco: Towards Greater Comprehension of Nasca Geoglyphs''. In: Lasaponara R., Masini N., Orefici G. (Eds). The Ancient Nasca World New Insights from Science and Archaeology. Springer International Publishing, 2016, pp. 239–278, doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-47052-8_12 * Jiang A., Chen F., Masini N. et al. (2016), ''Archeological crop marks identified from Cosmo-SkyMed time series: the case of Han-Wei capital city, Luoyang, China''. International Journal of Digital Earth, 10(8), 846–860. * Masini, N., Gizzi, F. T. et al. 2018. ''Medieval Archaeology Under the Canopy with LiDAR. The (Re)Discovery of a Medieval Fortified Settlement in Southern Italy'', in Remote Sensing, 10, 1598, doi: 10.3390/rs10101598 * Masini, N., Lasaponara, R.2019. ''Satellite and close range analysis for the surveillance and knowledge improvement of the Nasca geoglyphs''. Remote Sensing of Environment, 236, Article number 111447 * Masini, N., Romano, G., Sieczkowska, D., Capozzoli L., Spizzichino D., Gabellone F., Bastante J., Scavone M., Sileo M., Abate N., Margottini C., Lasaponara R. Non invasive subsurface imaging to investigate the site evolution of Machu Picchu. Scientific Reports, 13, 16035 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-43361-x

Bibliography

* Aimi A., Arqueólogos Intelectuales Italianos en el Peru. Instituto Italiano de Cultura de Lima, Lima, 2015, pp. 47–48. * Sartini R., Passa per lo Spazio la nuova Via della Seta. "''Il Nodo di Gordio''", 4 (2014), pp. 27–33.

References

External links

* http://www.archeo.unict.it/index.php/progetti-archeounict/peru-archeounict * http://pachacamac.cultura.pe/foto/tecnologias-en-la-arqueologia-de-pachacamac-utilizacion-de-drones-georadares-y-aparatos-de * http://archive.wikiwix.com/cache/20170406000000/http://www.nationalgeographic.it/wallpaper/2017/04/06/foto/nazca_le_nuove_linee_nel_deserto_peruviano-3485155/1/ * https://www.ispc.cnr.it/it_it/2020/11/05/missione-itaca/ * https://www.ilgiornaledellarte.com/articoli/in-origine-machu-picchu-era-una-cava/14462 3.html {{DEFAULTSORT:Masini, Nicola 1965 births Living people 21st-century Italian scientists Remote sensing archaeologists Nazca Lines