GNGTS 2024 - Atti del 42° Convegno Nazionale

Session 1.1 GNGTS 2024 Early results of a systematc revision of Ferrarese seismicity of the 13 th -15 th centuries. A. Faoro 1 , R. Camassi 1 , V. Castelli 2 1 Isttuto Nazionale di Geofsica e Vulcanologia - Sezione di Bologna, Bologna, Italy, 2 Isttuto Nazionale di Geofsica e Vulcanologia - Sezione di Bologna, Bologna/Ancona, Italy Within the PRIN 2020 project NASHA4SHA [Fault segmentaton and seismotectonics of actve thrust systems: the Northern Apennines and Southern Alps laboratories for new Seismic Hazard Assessments in northern Italy ] and in order to improve our general knowledge of the seismic record of the Ferrara area, we are proceeding to examine the ancient local narratve sources, not only to fnd informaton on “unknown” or “forgoten" earthquakes, but primarily to improve the understanding of earthquakes already known through a comprehensive study of the original texts which are relied on by the reference studies of the CPTI15 catalogue (Rovida et al., 2022). Far from limitng ourselves to searching for “earthquake news” and taking them out of context, as we tended to do in the "heroic" days at the dawn of modern historical seismology, we atempted here a more ambitous undertaking. Our aim is to examine original earthquake news in their cultural framework, to check their intrinsic quality and "authoritatveness", and thus to improve the quality of general knowledge on historical earthquake observatons. Using data extrapolated from narratve writen sources (such as chronicles and annals) to compile earthquake catalogues sometmes risks isolatng the data themselves and undermining their evaluaton. Indeed, news taken out of the context that reports them, while useful in itself, remain impoverished, like archaeological fndings whose site, locaton and circumstances of discovery are unknown.