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Department of Archaeology

 

Dr Roberto Ragno

Biography

After completing an MA in Archaeology at University College London in 2019, I moved to the University of Bari in Italy to undertake a PhD titled 'Peasants, Agriculture and Environment in the Italian Countryside of the 1st Millennium CE: A Bayesian Approach', which I completed in 2024.

The following year, I was a Research Fellow at the University of Bari, as well as being one of the coordinators of the Northern Apulia Coastal Survey Project — a long-term research initiative investigating settlement dynamics in the wetland and coastal landscapes of northern Apulia. My work within the project focused on fieldwork methodology and the statistical modelling of survey data.

Research

I am an archaeologist specialising in the Italian countryside of the first millennium CE, with a research focus on the quantitative analysis of environmental archaeological data.

At Cambridge, I am currently a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow, responsible for the project 'BTChron: Advancing Bayesian Methods for Typo-Chronologically Dated Archaeological Datasets'. This project develops new approaches for analysing typochronologically dated archaeological data, applying them to zooarchaeological evidence in order to investigate changes in livestock practices under Roman imperial rule in Western Europe.

Key Publications

Key publications

  • Ragno, R. 2025. Peasants, Agriculture, and Environment in the 1st Millennium CE Italian Countryside: A Bayesian approach, Adrias, 19. Edipuglia, Bari. ISBN: 979‑12‑5995‑113‑7

  • Ragno, R., Goffredo, R., Piepoli, L., 2025. Classifying Functional Areas at the Roman Villa of Mascherone (Manfredonia, Italy): Modeling Sparse Surface Survey Count Data using a Bayesian Zero‑Inflated Negative Binomial Model. Journal of Field Archaeology 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/00934690.2025.2578563

  • Ragno, R., 2025. Archaeobotanical Data from the Italian Peninsula in the 1st Millennium CE. Journal of Open Archaeology Data 13, 1‑6. https://doi.org/10.5334/joad.147

  • Ragno, R., 2024. Sheep and goats taxonomic abundance trends in 1st millennium CE southern Italy: Multilevel bayesian modelling of NISP datasets. Journal of Archaeological Science 171, 106068. 10.1016/j.jas.2024.106068

  • Ragno, R. 2023.  Cereal farming practices in Italy during the 1st millennium CE: An integrated approach to regionality. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 52, 104287. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2023.104287

Job Titles

Marie Sklodowska-Curie European Fellow, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research

General Info

Not available for consultancy
Research Expertise / Fields of study
Computational and Quantitative Archaeology
Field Methods

Contact Details

rr673[a]cam.ac.uk
McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research
Downing Street
Cambridge
CB2 3ER
Roberto Ragno
ResearchGate
Google Scholar
ORCID

Affiliations

Person keywords
Statistics
Environmental Archaeology
Agrarian Economy
Subjects
Archaeology
Themes
Science, Technology and Innovation
Environment, Landscapes and Settlement
Geographical areas
Europe
Mediterranean
Periods of interest
Classical - Roman
Medieval

Contact Us

Postal Address:
Department of Archaeology
Downing Street
CB2 3DZ Cambridge

 

Information provided by: 

outreach@arch.cam.ac.uk

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