The Geological map of Sannio and surrounding Areas by Raimondo Selli (scale 1:100.000). A precious collection of still current data.

In 1962, on the occasion of the congress of the Italian Geological Society on the theme of «The geology of the Apennines» (Rome, 13-14 December 1962), Raimondo Selli presented a work entitled «The tectonic problem of the Southern Apennines» in which the stratigraphic and structural lineaments of a wide and complex area stretching from Southern Abruzzi to Northern Calabria were illustrated in detail. This work was never published and the reason is unknown. At about twenty years from the death of Raimondo Selli a typewritten text of this work, which should have been published in 1964 in the Volume 4 of the Memoirs of the Italian Geological Society, has been discovered. Together with the manuscript, an unpublished geological map at a scale of 1:100,000 entitled «Geological Map of Sannio and Surrounding Areas» was recovered. This map covers a wide area of the Southern Apennines from Southern Abruzzi to Irpinia. We do not know exactly the date of compilation, but from the legend we can suppose a date surely before 1962. In the unpublished paper «The tectonic problem of the Southern Apennines» Selli modified quite significantly the ideas expressed in the oral presentation of 1962 and in the previous publications on the geology of the Southern Italy (SELLI, 1957, 1962), but there is no trace of this revision in the legend of the «Geological Map of Sannio and Surrounding Areas». Therefore, we have considered it appropriate to make some brief comments on the content of the unpublished work with the aim of enabling a reading of the geological map that respects the ideas arrived at by its author in 1964. A reading of the map without knowing the content of the unpublished paper, in fact, would not enable the reader, even though expert in the geology of Southern Italy, to fully appreciate its value and above all would not do justice to Raimondo Selli’s capacity to recognize and acknowledge geological evidence in conflict with ideas expressed in its previous publications. On superficial analysis the Geological Map of Sannio and Surrounding Areas could be considered as a document of purely historical value, given that the legend reflects a scheme already surpassed by the same Selli in 1964. In reality, this map is far from obsolete because it is an objective restitution of the geology of the study area not at all influenced by any pre-existing model. The geological map of Selli is therefore an unexplored mine of data still to be fully exploited containing observations that are well worth recovering and studying in the case we wish to realize an efficient update of the geological cartography of the region. Products such as this are increasingly rare today because too often do we see geological maps that derive from models instead of contributing to create them.