Prefazione. Le ragioni di un Convegno

[Machine translation] Preface/Introduction to the volume, which enucleates the elements of novelty in the approach to a topic that boasts a long historiographic tradition. Stones, stone objects, Roman or medieval, are plumbed into their many lives, starting from the moment in which ecofacts — and the petrographic analyses that constituted one of the pillars of the work highlight this essential component — are made artifacts, enter production cycles, go through articulated processing phases, are transported through long-range commercial routes (from the eastern Mediterranean, in the case of Roman marble) or into much more restricted circulation spaces (as in medieval Piedmont), However, always insightful spies of movements functional to historical reconstruction, and not only in terms of economic history. Archaeological, archaeometric approaches, the history of written sources and law are brought into dialogue, through the focus on the case studies of Vercelli and Milan.