APM – Archeologia Postmedievale, 25, 2021

Description

Already over a quarter of a century ago, with the conference "Archeologia Postmedievale: the European experience and Italy "(1994, then published in 1997), the theme of the" chronological end "of the sense of archeology was resolved with the indication that it was a false problem, even making an implicit mockery of the concept devaluation of "late", subjectively applied in archeology according to the chronological specialization of the various researchers. Without neglecting the "privileged condition that characterizes thearcheologia postmedievale as an intrinsically multidisciplinary research area "and the potential to develop general interpretative models also useful for other archeologies, thanks to the greater qualitative richness of sources of different nature on a single object (Archeologia Postmedievale, 1, p. 15). In reality, nothing is "late" in archeology, but all archaeological evidence - stratified or not - has, much more simply, its chronology.
Therefore, it is not the chronology that qualifies an asset as archaeological or not, even in spite of the unjustified position of the Code of Cultural Heritage and Landscape (DL January 22, 2004, n. 42, Art. 184, annex A), which refers to the hinge of the hundred years of age of the finds, for the purposes of their evaluation under certain circumstances, or to the "vestiges" of the First World War, subject to special provisions (Art. 11, paragraph 1, letter i; Art. 50, paragraph 2), unlike those of the Second World War, discriminated against for their chronology. Archaeological evidence, both the first and the second, in any case notoriously left (clearly, as the web testifies) prey to seeker collectors equipped with metal detectors, sometimes even authorized, activities that do not include any archaeological documentation and with a highly lucrative and profitable character. subtraction from public assets. The discrepancy between theory, methodology, legal instruments and reality is therefore more than evident and very appropriately the meaning of excavating with archaeological methodologies not only the most recent centuries, but the present itself, a subject that enjoys a broad framework of debate at European, was resumed in a recent conference of high disclosure, held in Florence on 18 December 2021, curated by Giuliano Volpe and Giuliano De Felice, as part of the TourismA events.
In this issue of the journal the proceedings are published, which include contributions by Giuliano Volpe, Marco Milanese, Giuliano De Felice, Francesca Anichini and Andrea Augenti.
Giuliano Volpe cites some of the most interesting aspects of the relationship between archeology and more recent centuries, the methodological sustainability of an archaeological gaze that cannot know interruptions, up to the present, albeit with the concrete risk of touching open wounds and sensitive nerves of history. recently, to the point of underlining the frequent identification of these researches with public archeology.
In his contribution, however, the writer discusses whether, in an Italian and European perspective, the theme of the coincidence of the most recent chronology of archeology with the present (and therefore in continuous movement) can now be truly considered a methodological postulate, in the light of the different attitudes held by archaeologists regarding this topic, positions inferred, mainly indirectly, in the absence of explicit declarations on the subject or of a real structured debate.
Giuliano De Felice intervenes on the recent (2021) archaeological investigations in the prison camp of Altamura (Bari), focusing on its complex history that goes well beyond the world wars, to become a refugee center in the 65s and destruction in the XNUMXs. , to obtain rubble to be used in imposing road embankments. Research has a fertile graft in the heritage community of the PGXNUMX field, in which memory, identification and enhancement manage to express the most original values ​​of the Faro Convention.
Francesca Anichini presents the system and the first results of a research on the traces of migrations in Lampedusa, with extensive references to international cases, in a complex framework made toxic by political exploitation and endemic racisms and in which archeology, moving on the trail of migrants and refugees, should develop a more effective dialogue with the sociology of migration.
The contribution of Andrea Augenti, Andrea Mandara and Francesca Pavese on the Classis Ravenna museum, in a container of high interest for industrial archeology, such as the former Eridania sugar factory, an operation that inserts the story of a central place for the world late antique and early medieval inside an identifying artifact of a long history of the work of this community, such as the sugar factory, which also becomes a narrative container of itself, in a strong perspective of public archeology.