Historical landscapes, traditions and cultural identities

Italian landscapes are complex stratified palimpsests preserving millenary traces of the human-nature relationship. In 2018, the Osservatorio Nazionale sulla Qualità del Paesaggio developed a Landscape Chart. Both the European Landscape Convention (Florence 2000) and the European Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society (Faro 2005) attributed a central role to the perception of landscapes by the heritage community, thus entrusted with a – previously inconceivable – leading role. 

Landscapes express a highly valuable heritage, which cannot be ignored by local communities, even more because they are currently facing deep changes and the effects of globalisation. Citizens’ active involvement is therefore essential. 

In consideration of such a state of affairs, 5 WPs or lines of intervention have been selected and planned, to be defined as follows: History and Global Archaeology of Stratified Landscapes, Landscapes, Mindscapes, Historical Identity, from the legacy of tradition to a shared future, Multidisciplinary approaches to historical landscapes and archaeological mapping, preventive archaeology and study of territorial transformations, Strategies of interventions on historical landscapes, Archaeology of the Sacred. As far as connections with other Spokes are concerned, notice: Spoke 1 deals with a cross-cutting theme, encompassing all other Spokes, precisely because the landscape is the context that contains all the components of CH. 

Planned activities are:

• Historical-archaeological researches in selected areas, involving local communities (WP1);

• Developing strategies, methods and tools for the co-valorization of cultural sites through Heritage Communities to activate cultural and/or heritage-led regenerations (WP1-5). 

• Reconstructing Mindscapes and Cultural Landscapes throughout the Centuries from Pre-History to nowadays (WP1,2,3,5). 

• Producing archaeological maps of settlements and territorial contexts integrated in open data platforms and Apulian pilot to establish a Centro Naz. per l’Archeologia Preventiva (WP 3).

• Elaborating/digitizing catalogues and guides of selected art museums and monuments to foster inclusive identities; creation of multimedia representations of artistic lost phases of peripheral areas in connection with social, cultural and political history. (WP 2-3) 

• Virtual reconstruction of the spatial and social evolution of urban centres between late antiquity and early modern times. Census and digitization of archival excavation materials, reconnaissance of historical buildings for a widespread knowledge of the historical evolution of the city (WP1 - 3)

• Reconstruction of historical memories through a cultural and physical re-mapping of some religious (rural and urban) landscapes (WP5)

• Living Laboratories to promote local communities’ engagement (WP1-5)