The aim of the archaeological project is to use the visible signs of the material culture of the fortified site of Montaccianico to study elements of the decline of the feudal overlords in the actual dynamics of the Ubaldini dynasty in relation to their territorial context in the Middle Ages which led to the creation of the ‘Terra Nuova’ of Castel S. Barnaba /Scarperia.

"Castel S. Barnaba" and its territory represents in fact a valuable historic and archaeological testimony of the founding and development of a new foundation but also of the abandonment and repopulation of a system of settlement which played an important role in the policy of conquest and political-territorial reorganisation of the Florentine territory in the course of the central centuries of the middle ages. The basic framework of the archaeological project will take the form of a journey through history which, starting from the last “still” of the siege and destruction of Montaccianico (1306), traces back its various phases and reconstructs the system of the feudal contado.

A landscape modified by the subsequent profound and dramatic transformations produced by the new expansion policy of the city of Florence, which was to be followed by the founding of the ‘Terra nuova’.