Approcci multidisciplinari allo studio degli edifici termali tardo antichi: dallo scavo all'analisi spaziale applicata. Il caso delle terme di Metaponto

This dissertation investigates Roman bath buildings during Late Antiquity through a multidisciplinary methodology that bridges field excavation and applied spatial analysis. Its twofold aim is, first, to develop a replicable research tool — a spatial geo-database built in QGIS — and, second, to apply it to a direct case study: the so-called castrum baths of Metaponto, in southern Italy. The methodological core is a spatial Geo-DBMS that converts both legacy bibliography and new excavation data into queryable information. Built as an open-source GeoPackage, the database links each thermal complex, recorded as a geographic point, to an attribute layer organised into nine thematic record sheets — general data, chronology, plan, thermal rooms, heating technology, hydraulics, building technique, decoration and notes. SQL queries and virtual layers allow the corpus to be filtered along any combination of parameters and to generate phase maps and an automatically updated atlas. The analysis addresses five dimensions: geographic location, individual room spaces, architectural features, technological systems and distinctive traits. A first application examines the diachronic diffusion and survival of thermal buildings across the Mediterranean. Drawing on 294 case studies distinguished between newly built and continuously used baths, the phase maps reveal divergent regional trajectories: a progressive decline in Italy, accelerated by invasions and the Greek-Gothic War, against a striking persistence — even growth — in Egypt, where economic and military stability sustained the bathing habit well into Late Antiquity. The evidence argues against a single cause for the end of public bathing, pointing instead to a convergence of unsustainable maintenance costs and geopolitical crises. A second application quantifies the volumetrics of the bath rooms, measuring surfaces and proportions of frigidaria, tepidaria and calidaria across regional samples. A third addresses hydraulic technology, showing the prevalence of indirect supply systems — wells and cisterns over aqueducts — without a corresponding decline in functional standards. The case study of Metaponto grounds these themes in stratigraphic evidence. Renewed excavations (2019–2024) by the School of Specialisation of the University of Basilicata, in the Settore B / Saggio IV, brought to light heated rooms, water-management structures and two distinct hypocaust systems. The analysis reconstructs the building’s pre-thermal phase, sealed over an earlier road axis (a precious terminus post quem), two construction phases — an original layout and a late antique remodelling with the addition of apses and the conversion of spaces — and a final phase of abandonment and reuse, dated to the end of the sixth century AD. The study of an unpublished assemblage of 3,813 pottery fragments, in particular the transport amphorae (African spatheia, Eastern LRA, late Keay forms), confirms a chronology spanning the fourth to seventh centuries and identifies Metaponto as a port of trade still active in the Late Antique period. The dissertation concludes that late antique baths represent not a rupture but a transformation of the Roman model: strong typological continuity coexists with reduced dimensions, the disappearance of palaestrae and natationes, the spread of small individual tubs, and a more intimate bathing experience, all shaped by economic and technical constraints. The geo-database and atlas, conceived as a work in progress, offer a scalable framework for future research, to be extended chronologically and integrated with three-dimensional documentation and further stratigraphic investigation.