Organization

CENTRO RICERCHE ARCHEOLOGICHE E SCAVI DI TORINO
PER IL MEDIO ORIENTE E L'ASIA

President: Prof. Antonio Invernizzi
Director: Prof. Stefano De Martino

The Centro Ricerche Archeologiche e Scavi di Torino in its current form originated as an independent offshoot of Is.M.E.O.’s and Turin’s Centro Scavi e Ricerche in Asia, and was founded upon the initiative of Giorgio Gullini on September 16, 1963 by the University of Turin, the City of Turin and the Province of Turin, subsequently joined by the Region of Piedmont and the Fondazione CRT, in order to support the archaeological research, especially abroad, of the University of Turin’s Institute of Archaeology and, since its creation in 1982, by the Department of Anthropological, Archaeological and Historical/Territorial Sciences.
It was granted official recognition with D.P.R. n. 702 of March 28, 1972. Thanks to a fruitful scientific cooperation with the Polytechnic University of Turin and the University of Turin’s Faculty of Science, and to the introduction, in archaeological research, of the contributions of mathematical, physical and natural sciences, the Centro Scavi’s activities have taken place, with a fortunate intuition from the outset, through an interdisciplinary approach that led archaeologists to work with researchers from different backgrounds: anthropologists, biologists, chemists, physicists, geologists, topographers, and experts in photogrammetry, remote sensing and information technology.

The Centre has always operated in this way in order to correctly manage and preserve our cultural heritage, for the purposes of both reconstructing historical scenarios and of presenting the archaeological research’s results to the public. For 40 years now, the Centre has thus linked its name and that of Turin to historical/archaeological research, especially in Mediterranean countries, including Italy, and the Near and Middle East. Abroad, on behalf of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it performs Italy’s duties stemming from cooperation agreements in cultural projects with several countries – in fact, it runs the Italian-Iraqi Institute of Archaeological Sciences and the Centre for the Restoration of Monuments in Iraq, and it is working on research campaigns in Turkmenistan, in Jordan, in Lebanon, in Tunisia and in Italy as well as in Iraq.