I campi di prigionia austro-ungarici della Prima Guerra Mondiale nell’Isola dell’Asinara. Indagini archeologiche non invasive (campagna 2023)

The essay reports the results of the scientific research conducted in 2023 on the areas of the Austro-Hungarian prisoner-of-war camps on the Island of Asinara (Asinara National Park, Municipality of Porto Torres), following the first surveys for which ample information has already been provided in this journal. The remains of the World War I prisoner-of-war camps on Asinara (North-Western Sardinia) represent the largest Italian archaeological site of this type and chronology among approximately one hundred comparable sites in all twenty Italian regions. These camps on Asinara are a unique set, divided into five distinct encampments (Fornelli, Tumbarino, Stretti, Campo Perdu, and Cala Reale) that occupy several hundred hectares of the island’s territory. The new phase of field investigation took place in the form of a “Permit for non-invasive archaeological investigations” issued by the Sopritendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio for the provinces of Sassari and Nuoro. An analytical study of the surface investigation at the Stretti Tent Field made it possible to map out the checkerboard grid of the camp, surrounded by a dry-stone wall and enclosing fifty tent bases, dug into the rock and lined with masonry, with an average size of 4×3 meters, in addition to nine structures of varying sizes outside the fence. These data already suggest clear strategies for a future excavation campaign to build, based on material documentation, a realistic model (or multiple models) of the prisoners’ living conditions inside the tents.