Set into the countryside near Altamura, Camp 65 began its life in 1940 as one of the largest prisoner-of-war campsin southern Italy. Thousands of Allied soldiers—mostly British and Commonwealth troops captured in North Africa—were held here during the early years of World War II. But the site’s history did not end with the war. Following the 1943 armistice, the camp was abandoned, only to be reactivated as a training ground for Yugoslav partisans. In the 1950s, it saw yet another transformation, becoming a refugee settlement for families fleeing political upheaval in Eastern Europe.

Over time, the physical traces of Camp 65 were nearly erased. Demolished, buried under roadworks, or simply left to decay, the camp all but disappeared from public awareness. Yet the land remembers. Foundations, drainage ditches, and fragments of daily life still lie beneath the surface, waiting to be uncovered. Since 2021, archaeological excavations have begun to bring these hidden layers back into view, revealing a site rich in complexity, contradiction, and continuity.

Camp 65 is not just a military relic—it is a landscape of transitions, marked by captivity and solidarity, abandonment and survival. Its story spans decades and borders, linking the Murgia to wider European and global movements of war, resistance, and displacement. Today, the site is animated by a local heritage community, which works to preserve and share its legacy through education, open days, and storytelling events. Public archaeology initiatives, oral history labs, and student field schools have transformed the camp into a space of learning and connection.

In the spirit of the Faro Convention, Camp 65 is a living heritage site—where history is not frozen in time but continually reinterpreted through the voices of those who care for it. It reminds us that even erased places can be reclaimed, and that the traces of the past can offer tools for understanding our present.

In the wide, flat expanses of the Tavoliere plain, modern forms of marginality have taken root in the very soil that once hosted fascist farm colonies and postwar land reform projects. Scattered among tomato fields and access roads, informal settlements of migrant workers—often called ghettos—rise and fall with the harvest season. These are not marked on maps, but they are deeply embedded in the economic system that supplies a large part of Italy’s agricultural production.

Constructed with salvaged materials—wood, plastic, tarps—these camps are more than precarious homes. They are places of labour, resistance, and survival. Populated mainly by workers from Africa and Eastern Europe, the ghettos function in legal grey zones shaped by labour exploitation, gangmasters (caporalato), and systemic neglect. Yet even here, amid hardship, a distinct material culture forms: kitchens improvised from oil drums, pathways trodden into the dust, shrines made from repurposed crates.

Approaching these places archaeologically means more than documenting ruins—it means listening. Through a combination of field observation, oral history, and collaboration with NGOs and unions, the project brings visibility to landscapes often ignored or erased. The ghettos echo earlier failures of land reform and rural planning; they are contemporary ruins of a system that extracts labour while denying stability.

This is not traditional heritage. But it is real, and urgent. The archaeology of migrant settlements invites us to rethink what we preserve, who decides, and how memory is built not only on stone, but also on plastic, dust, and silence.