Managing the intangible with ATLAS.ti©. Methods and tools for archeological research of sensory texts; Gestire l’immateriale con ATLAS.ti©. Metodi e strumenti per la ricerca archeologica dei conTesti sensoriali

This work starts out from the most recent themes that have emerged in the field of Cognitive Archaeology by proposing an experimental method of spatial analysis that adopts two main measurement tools: the human body and software. The specific aim is to understand archaeological contexts not only by applying traditional methodologies, but also by working through behavioural analogies between the present and the past. Borrowing methods and procedures from the cognitive sciences for collecting qualitative data, the research has involved a selected group of people who were subjected to a sensory experiment within such a special archaeological context, the natural caves. The texts of the dense descriptions and questionnaires filled in by the participants were then analysed with the help of the qualitative-quantitative analysis software ATLAS.ti$^\textrm©$. The aims of this article are several: firstly, it is intended to present the ATLAS.ti software, widely used in Sociology but almost unknown among archaeologists; the effectiveness of its application is then demonstrated by tackling a specific case study of Cognitive Archaeology; finally, it contributes to the debate on the development of digital tools and technologies that are increasingly suitable for answering archaeological questions, in particular those related to the semantic understanding of space, which often escape the materiality of data.