Mapping Sacred Spaces - The Digital Archive Project: Searching, Collecting, Cataloging, and Archiving Medieval Marble Liturgical Furnishings and Decorations

Ruggero Longo

The MSS-Digital Archive Project represents a fundamental phase of the project “Mapping Sacred Spaces: Forms, Functions, and Aesthetics in Medieval Southern Italy.”
The Digital Archive is conceived as a database that catalogues and systematizes all the data related to the corpus of liturgical furnishings of Southern Italy as they were distributed within each monument and as these monuments were dispersed across distinct geographical areas; furthermore, as an archive it compiles a bibliography of all the documents and iconographical sources related to the objects within the monuments.
The project includes the implementation of the database and the related website. In addition to the search tool that operates with object names or places and that is equipped with specific filters, the final graphic interface will allow the user to navigate the map by charting a course among the monuments distributed on a geographical scale throughout Southern Italy, to explore individual buildings through the mapping of the objects preserved there, and to analyze each piece of evidence through the mapping of objects and components.
The ultimate goal is to provide scholars with an effective tool to map the sacred spaces of the Norman-Swabian South, to visualize the distribution of liturgical furnishings in Southern Italy, and to analyze every artifact within the buildings, ranging from the object in situ to every single fragment pertaining to it or surviving in the case of objects that have been lost.