Committee: Daniela Ciaffi (Politecnico di Torino – DIST), Maria Adriana Giusti (Politecnico di Torino – DAD), Rosa Tamborrino (Politecnico di Torino – DIST), Willeke Wendrich (University of California, Los Angeles, USA).
Reporting: Willeke Wendrich (University of California, Los Angeles, USA).
In this Macrosession with a multi-disciplinary endeavour, we consider the interaction between humanity and its environment in the longue durée. The term Anthropocene has been coined as a geological era to indicate the measurable influence of human activity in the geological record. It does not, however, consider the human perspective. Archaeology provides the possibility to understand not just what this measurable influence is, but also how and why it came into being. Our environment is a palimpsest of human activity, of which part is characterized as "damage or destruction", while other elements are considered "cultural heritage" and are preserved for posterity. The built and natural environment are closely linked to memory and oral history, both at present and in the past.
This macrosession includes presentations on the current, rural, urban and peri-urban landscape to explore this complexity, for instance as a number of disconnections between environment and community; or between community and its cultural heritage. In the perspective of the urban environment in relation to landscape, archaeology has a unique role to perform. It allows for a longue dureé perspective, gives a voice and place in history to communities from the past and reconnects natural and cultural heritage to local communities in the present.
More specifically the macrosession will include (but it will be limited to):
Cultural heritage assessment and the selective process of preservation.
The assessment of what constitutes cultural heritage is in constant flux. An example is the shift in attention at Monticello, from the stately home of Thomas Jefferson to the slave quarters and their subsistence gardens. Both environmental and cultural changes continuously create the need to adapt and to re-interpret heritage and landscapes and re-address preservation.
Memory and archaeology.
Archaeology provides us with access to the lives of populations who did not leave written records, either before the invention of writing, or as part of a segment of society that did not have access to writing. Farmers, workers, women and other groups whose voices are rarely heard, can be considered through the material traces they have left behind. Archaeology also enables the comparison of written concepts and ideals with the practical situation on the ground. It provides an entry in the long lasting human-nature interactions that have shaped the diversity of our landscape as the effects of slow adaptations over time. This topic calls for considerations of how memory is expressed and curated in material culture and/or landscape manipulation.
Sussidiarietà e participazione come nuova frontiera
What are we talking about when we talk about cultural heritage as a common? Beyond the ownership approach, we need to consider the non exclusive use of the cultural heritage. This topic call for experiences of co-managed processes for fostering participatory processes paying particular attention to people without voice and power.
The role of urban and periurban landscapes.
The focus is on the role of gardens and greenery in the urban landscape in the face of a mature acquisition of issues related to ecology, sustainability, circular economy, and new patterns of behavior. Today, one of the major challenges of the international community is the renewal of urban and social restructuring strategies (think only of the American Research Resilient or the UN-Habitat working group of the United Nations) in the face of calamitous events, those accidents of difficult prediction and generalization, a central aspect, is to recreate the ecosystemic connective that hold together areas used as parks and gardens with the surrounding fabric.
More topics
Interested persons applying can add more topics and interpretations