Wednesday 17 April
9.15 – Institutional greetings
Raffaele Mellace, Dean of the School of Humanities
Laura Gaggero, Vice rector for the research
Silvia Pallecchi, DAFIST Director
Laura Canesi, DISTAV Directorate
9.45 – Introduction
Anna Maria Stagno, The Archaeology of sharing practices. Changes in practices, tools and the social dimension
10.30 – Coffee break
Session 1: To argue perchance to share: spaces and resources as contested objects
11.00 – Round table
chaired by Matteo Tacca
Introductory talks and participants:
From milk to electricity: a history of community ownership in a Pyrenean village, Nathan Brenu – Università di Genova
Between the end of the 19th century and the end of the 1960s, the population of the village of Llo was five times lower than it is now. Since then, the village has seen a demographic rebound, with the number of inhabitants doubling in the space of fifty years. But the social transformation has been particularly significant: the farming and dairy village has become a dormitory and tourist village. This new economic configuration and the need to adapt to the new paradigms of contemporary municipal management have led to a metamorphosis of the entire administration of the municipal domain. What does this tell us about the possibilities and impossibilities of a new governance of the commons?
Claiming environmental resources: management, continuities and abandonment in Bosco Fontana (Ligurian Apennines), Caterina Piu – Università di Genova
The paper aims to reflect on the dynamics of abandonment of rural areas, through the presentation of the case study of Bosco Fontana, a common land documented since the mid- XV century, owned by the Fontana kinship, whose heirs are currently reunited in a legally recognised association. The research sets out to analyse and reconstruct the process, through which this community keeps its territorial rights on the woodland, since the XVIII century, by modifying its structure depending on different institutional forms. Archaeological and archival data allows to document and analysed continuities and discontinuities in practices of environmental resource activation and management that can be explained as a part of the historical claiming strategies of territorial possession and rights.
Towards an archaeology of practices: a micro-historical and diachronic research approach. Case studies from the Basque Country, Josu Narbarte Hernández – Universidad del País Vasco, Aranzadi
Archaeology offers a privileged approach to the study of social relations at the local scale. Beyond the conceptual and operative problems underlined by the application of the post- processual theoretical framework (e.g., fragmentation, lack of inter-comparability, survivorship bias, etc.), this communication proposes to focus on the archaeological characterisation of specific practices as a valuable path to the analysis of social and economic relations at the local scale. Based on this idea, two examples from the Basque Country (the pastures of the Aldude mountains and the fisheries of the Bidasoa estuary) are compared from a micro-historical and diachronic perspective in order to identify the plurality of agents and practices involved in their appropriation, regulation and management.
Discussant:
Giulia Beltrametti (Università di Roma Tre), Maria Relaki (Open University), Giulia Bizzarri, Adele Repetto
12.30 – Buffet lunch
14.00 – Keynote
Ian Hodder (Stanford University), Why do we talk about things when there are just flows
15.00 – General discussion
15.30 – Coffee break
Session 2: Continuities and discon-tinuities in practices, settlements and landscapes
16.00 – Round table
chaired by Alessandro Panetta (CNR-ISEM, Cagliari)
Introductory talks and participants:
The Devil’s Gold. Sulphur and the shaping of landscape in central Sicily: the social use of space and natural resources from prehistory to the present, Enrico Giannitrapani – Arkeos s.c.; Dipartimento Culture e Società, Università di Palermo
Today, one’s perception of the landscape when travelling through central Sicily is that of an immutable present. The view is lost in infinite, monotonous rolling fields used for cereal monoculture or grazing. The only changing aspect is colour: yellow in summer, brown in autumn and winter, green in spring. Everything else is apparently still. However, this perception hides and obscures past movements and flows of natural elements, human beings, and animals. Recent archaeological, palynological, and geoarchaeological studies indicate how this landscape, from prehistory to the Middle Ages, was populated by woods, flocks, farmers and shepherds, farms, hamlets, roads, and mines, elements no longer present today or that still survive only in a ruderal form. Among these stands sulphur, named in the rural Christian tradition as the Devil’s gold. Together with rock salt, it is one of the main components of the evaporitic series deposited about 6 million years ago on the bottom of a dried-up Mediterranean during the Messinian salinity crisis. It embodies a strong identifying element from an economic and social point of view. With forms and modes that we still need to analyse in-depth, it contributed to the shaping and legitimising of the social landscapes of the inner part of the island.
Changes and continuities in the post-medieval rural landscapes of the northern Iberian Peninsula. A summary of three years of archaeological research, Andrés Menéndez Blanco – Universidad de Oviedo
The settlement networks in the mountain areas of the North Iberian Peninsula showed great changes in the post-medieval centuries. Careful observation reveals the formation and disappearance of settlements, or the change between temporary and permanent uses of others. All these transformations (easily visible in the archival documentation) are linked to profound changes in the forms of management of natural agro-silvo-pastoral resources (not very visible in the archival documentation). From a multidisciplinary and micro-analytical perspective it is possible to observe small-scale changes and continuities in the area of a local community: in the small pastoral settlements, the parcel of land, forest areas, etc. In this way it is possible to better understand the relationship between changes at different scales. In this paper we will present the progress of the archaeological studies developed in northern Spain within the Antigone, TemPa and Kore projects.
The historical soil management in mountain socio-ecosystems of the south-eastern Iberian Peninsula, José Abellán Santisteban – Universidad de Granada
This study focuses on the historical soil management in the mountain socio-ecosystems of the South-eastern Iberian Peninsula, with a specific focus on the Sierra Nevada region. Through methods of landscape archaeology and archaeological survey, it examines how human communities have interacted with the mountain environment over time. The application of geoarchaeological techniques allows for a deeper understanding of soil management practices and their impact on socio-ecosystems. This study provides a comprehensive insight into the relationship between human activities and the environment in mountainous regions of the South-eastern Iberian Peninsula.
Rural heritage and landscape in northern Highlands of Albania and Ligurian Apennines, Eltjana Shkreli – Università di Genova
Until the end of the XXth century, rural settlements in the Albanian Alps were considered among the most isolated communities, being associated to a poor economic development, highly limited access hence leading to preserved cultural landscapes. The last 30 years the continuous depopulation of those remote areas is threatening this heritage, therefore its valorisation is crucial as it serves as reflection of identity and symbol of historic, cultural and social value. By implementing an interdisciplinary research approach based on buildings’ archaeology, environmental history, and oral history methods, the research project aims (1) to analyse the evolution of the pattern related to rural architecture in the uplands; (2) to identify and evaluate the main characters and elements that composed the dispersed settlement landscape of the Albanian Alps in time; (3) to compare the Albanian case study (hamlet) with a suitable one located in the Ligurian Apennines to unveil their commonalities and differences.
Discussant: Chiara Molinari, Eva Svensson (University of Karlstad), Carlo Montanari, Giorgia Frangioni, Bruna Ilde Menozzi
Thursday 18 April
Session 3 – Intersection and ideas: between philosophy, archaeology and history
9.00 – Round table
chaired by Anna Maria Stagno
The material side of free speech, Corrado Fumagalli – Università di Genova
The success of social media platforms raises important philosophical questions concerning the position of free speech in liberal and democratic societies. Standard moral, legal, and political-theoretical arguments conceptualize freedom speech mainly as an entitlement granted by liberal and democratic institutions to members of society. Yet, as it happened (and will continue to happen) with other forms of technological change, social media platforms have changed how we transmit our ideas to one another. Several layers (infrastructure providers, social media platforms, web hosting, search engines, content- moderation services, national and supranational legal frameworks) have now entered the picture. For this reason, in my project, I argue that political theorists should overcome the long-standing divide between symbolic matters and material issues to reconceptualize our exercise of the right to free speech, from a state-centric legally protected entitlement to a commodity shaped by multiple and competing interests.
Who is who in Colanesi (Monte Fasce, Genova, IT) – A settlement and its historically contested surroundings during 19th and 20th centuries, Giulia Bizzarri – Università di Genova
This contribution will outline research carried out on the southern hillsides of Monte Fasce, located to the east of Genoa, with a specific focus on the settlement of Colanesi, characterised by the presence of several small groups of structures now abandoned, presenting stratified traces of use and modification. The integration of studies on documentary sources related to the Monte Fasce commons and their management during the second half of the 19th century provide a layered context within which the settlement can be observed. While Colanesi itself might have not been part of the municipality owned commons, it was likely surrounded by parcels, contested between different municipalities and which saw a continuous privatisation process and a intense re-subdivision between several new owners over the course of a few decades. Colanesi will be hence analysed within this historical background as a settlement located in between processes and jurisdictions.
Archaeology and nostalgia. Affinities-divergences between the Urbex fellows and us, Alessandro Panetta – Istituto di Storia dell’Europa Mediterranea, CNR, Cagliari
The concept of ‘abandonment’ is related to postclassical archaeological research in many ways, from the studies on deserted villages, among the founding elements of medieval archaeology in both England and Italy, to its widespread use among the interpretative categories used in the periodisations of sites (construction – life – abandonment). The attention of archaeologists to discontinuities and moments of abandonment of sites, buildings and places (curiously, very rarely of objects) has in recent years found a counterpart in the phenomenon of urbex, practised by an increasing number of enthusiasts. This interest often overlaps (sometimes making it objectively difficult to distinguish its genesis) with archaeological research on the same places, especially regarding sites from the last two centuries. The aim of this contribution is to analyse the reasons and characteristics of this proximity-distance, starting from personal experience regarding a phenomenon that is now widely studied by both archaeologists and urbex enthusiasts: military structures from the Second World War.
Do we have any news on the old question of interdisciplinarity?, Giulia Beltrametti – Università di Roma Tre
The title of this session refers to ‘intersections’ between disciplines. In my introductory talk, I will try to identify some points of this issue, which is both theoretical and methodological, starting from my research experience devoted in recent years to an interdisciplinary project between history and anthropology, dedicated to the history of collective property on the Italian-Slovenian border.
Discussants: Despina Catapoti (Πανεπιστήμιο Αιγαίου), Vittorio Tigrino (Università del Piemonte Orientale)
10.30 – Coffee break
Session 4 – Abandonment as a process
9.00 – Round table
chaired by Sabina Ghislandi
Echoes of abandonment: unveiling relict ecologies in the Apuan Alps, Gabriele Gattiglia – Università di Pisa
In the last 80 years, the landscapes of the Versilia mountains (northwestern Tuscany) have undergone profound changes due to depopulation. Since 2020, the archaeological, anthropological, and environmental analysis of these highland areas has led to outlining the relationships between humans and non-humans, mapping their various relationships of coexistence, cooperation and even friction. This has led us to challenge the anthropocentric perspective by exploring multi-species responses, ecological relics, and resurgences and to reflect on the concept of abandonment itself and the proxies we consider significant in defining the absence of human activity.
Sierra Nevada: between abandonment and continuity, Ylenia Paciotti – Università di Genova
The research takes place in the municipalities of Bubión, Capileira, and Pampaneira, in Sierra Nevada. In this territory, abandoned areas coexist with areas of continuous use that have undergone changes over time, especially during the last century.
The ongoing study aims to understand how the territory has changed between the 18th and 21st centuries and to comprehend the causes that have led to the abandonment of some areas and the preservation of others, through a comparison of archaeological, cartographic, and cadastral sources. Moreover, this area is characterized by the presence of resource-sharing practices, specifically regarding water resources. In relation to this, changes have been observed in technologies (such as canal cementation and the use of pipes). Therefore, there is a coexistence of an older network of canals that integrates perfectly into the territory alongside the use of pipelines in some areas.
Deciphering Velva’s landscape: first results of rural transformations through landscape archaeology in Liguria, Italy, Laura Gago-Chóren – Università di Genova
The rural landscape of the villages of the Ligurian entroterra (Liguria-Italy inland) is currently marked by a progressive process of depopulation and an accelerated abandonment of agro-silvo-pastoral activities. The frazione of Velva belonging to the comune of Castiglione Chiavarese is a paradigmatic example of this process, which began in earnest in the middle of the 20th century. To understand the processes that led to the current state and configuration of its landscape we are using a methodological program of Landscape Archaeology, starting a multidisciplinary research program, combining the analysis of material, environmental, written, and oral sources. The main objective will be to try to reconstruct and understand the changes in environmental resource management practices in post-medieval times and to identify, employing a regressive study, the changes, and continuities, reflecting on their causes and consequences. The first results of this research will be presented here, opening a discussion on the effectiveness of the results obtained in generating tools for interpretation and solutions to the current challenges facing rural areas.
Discussants: Margarita Fernández Mier (Universidad de Oviedo), Caterina Piu, Diego Moreno, Alessandro Panetta (CNR-ISEM, Cagliari), Riccardo Santeramo
12.30 – General discussion
Planning a future agenda (disciplinary workshops and conferences)
13.00 – Buffet lunch
Friday 19 April
Excursion and fieldwork at the “Montagna di Fascia” (Monte Fasce and Colanesi)