La cooperazione Italia-Montenegro nel nuovo millennio, tra iniziative europee e innovazione tecnologica

New and technologically innovative forms of scientific cooperation between Italy and Montenegro characterise the new Millennium. After the declaration of independence of Montenegro in 2006 and the setting up in the same year of the Adriatic Ionian Euro-region, cultural initiatives have developed along two main avenues: well established long-term archaeological missions, mainly directed towards ancient Montenegrin cities such as Doclea and Stari Bar, or more focused research projects deriving from an intervention policy that makes the new State directly involved in individual European projects. Italo-Montenegrin cross-border cooperation is thus the result of a broader European policy that focuses on the Adriatic Sea as a crossroads of cultures and civilisations, what Braudel defined as "the most coherent of the marine regions", a major bridge between the East and West as well as between central Europe and the Mediterranean. This policy finds a source of action in European strategies, especially as regards the management and sustainable development of the cultural heritage of coastal areas. Inter - and macro - regional cooperation is predominantly a phenomenon of the 21st century and goes hand in hand with the exponential growth of sophisticated ICT tools and techniques. Their incorporation into archaeological methodology has transformed the way research is conducted and, progressively, moves the research axis from the study of the art, architecture, and material culture of the past towards a social and public archaeology, which has among its objectives the interaction between historical-archaeological research and contemporaneity. In this paper, special attention is devoted to the ancient towns of Stari Bar and Doclea, where systematic surveys and archaeological excavations were conducted by Italo-Montenegrin interdisciplinary teams, as part of European initiatives or bilateral projects, mostly related to the "science diplomacy" strategy of the Italian National Research Council. This is also the occasion to illustrate the recent achievements of archaeological computing, where, for some time now, technology has governed the three main areas of archaeological practice: field work, laboratory analysis and cultural heritage management and promotion. Finally, particularly significant is the sector of Digital Heritage or Heritage Science, which today seems to be the focus of all digital archaeological work.