Periodic Reporting for period 1 - WasteLands (Waste lands? New perspectives on the archaeology of disaster recovery in medieval Europe)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2021-09-01 al 2023-08-31
The project explicitly addresses the materialisation of resilience, memory and inequality in post-disaster historic landscapes, and it is relevant as communities living in the aforementioned post-disaster area still face the risk of devastating landslides, earthquakes and floods. The project tackles relevant but sometimes overlooked key-questions: what is the archaeological evidence for the impact of the natural hazard in the landscape? What is the archaeological evidence for the post-disaster recovery phase, i.e. the adaptive strategies put in place to cope with a transformed environment? How do affected societies reshape the landscape in the aftermath of disaster? Did they only recover from the experienced disaster or, by developing mitigative and protective countermeasures, did they also prepare for the next disaster to come? To what extent were the responses adopted inspired by societal co-operation, negotiation, coercion, or conflict and how did those elements materially impact on the post-disaster landscape? By collaborating with professional risk practitioners, WasteLands develops a dedicated risk communication strategy based on the archaeology of disasters to inform young generations, local communities and stakeholders.
Scientific dissemination was targeted through the publication of the project’s website and the presentation of the WasteLands project at the international conference Natural Disasters in History: On the 500th anniversary of the Vila Franca do Campo Earthquake (Vila Franca do Campo, Azores, Portugal; Oct 2022) and soon the project will tackle dissemination activities with dedicated secondment at the INGV (Bologna seat) and the Biesbosch Museum (Netherlands). As a result, the selected post-disaster landscapes are now better understood from an archaeological perspective, and crucial aspects such as resilience, memory and social inequality are deepened in a more theoretically informed way.
Designed around a selection of historic disaster case studies, WasteLands will provide the ideal combination of historical and archaeological evidence to unravel post-disaster landscapes, and facilitate a comparative approach between different locations and dates. Its novelty is also reflected in its ambition to contribute to contemporary disaster risk communication and public engagement with a dedicated programme developed with risk reduction practitioners and cultural heritage professionals. Such an approach has never been considered previously in the archaeology of risk and resilience. To date, the discipline has not fully exploited the possibility of engaging with disaster risk communication programmes on a routine basis, nor has disaster archaeology fully explored novel strategies for the development of effective community-based participatory research. In practice, the engagement of archaeologists working on natural disasters with local museums, cultural institutions and public communities is still rare: WasteLands aims at opening new avenues of collaboration which will be easily replicable elsewhere. For example, the project will activate a new archaeological excavation on the Mont Granier landslide in partnership with the local association ‘Mémoire et patrimoine des Marches’.