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The historical complex of Santa Maria Nova, located in the heart of the Parco Archeologico dell'Appia Antica in Rome, is a real monumental "palimpsest" that has been developed from the Second century A.D. until the last restorations, which have transformed it into an exhibition center of the via Appia Antica, within an archaeological, monumental and landscape context unique in the world. The contribution aims to illustrate the analysis, conducted through the methodologies of the archaeology of architecture, which has identified the various building phases that make up the monument as it has reached us to date, and studied the transformations of volumes and interior spaces due to changes in the intended use occurred over the centuries.

An analysis of pigment traces obtained from an ensemble of marble and limestone finely sculpted architectural elements, kept in the National Archaeological Museum of Cividale del Friuli (Italy), has been performed using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), particle induced X-ray emission (PIXE) and, for the white paint, Raman spectroscopy (RS). The experimental results on six different colours, combined with the historic, stylistic and documentary evidences provided by a recent study, strengthen the hypothesis of the dating and the provenance of all the sculptures in a prestigious building of Cividale in Veneto-Byzantine style, the palace of the Patriarch of Aquileia. The analyses also allow a first insight into the conservation history of the ensemble of architectural decorations.

The analysis of 42 glass fragments, excavated in the Italian archaeological site of San Martino di Ovaro, that includes a palaeochristian church dated from the V–VI century, has been done using the PIXE technique in a fully non-destructive way without any sample preparation. The results have been validated with a set of standards and using PIGE data acquired in parallel. The data of 29 of the 42 glasses indicate that an earlier group of samples (window sheets and sacred vessels, dated from the V–VI century) is typical of the Roman technology and can be associated to a Levantine production of natron glass. The blue glasses of this group are all window sheets coloured with cobalt, probably from the Near-East. The remaining heterogeneous samples (lamps, necklaces, cups) are related by their type and function and by the different compositions, to the later use of the site as a market place. The natron glasses of San Martino di Ovaro provide new data for the understanding of the changes in the glass industry in North-eastern Italy and nearby regions across the fall of the Western Roman Empire.