Project description
A novel take on the transition to "modernity": from the rural to the industrialised society
The EU-funded INPACT project aims to investigate how the relationship between local communities and their environment changed as rural areas became industrialised, by analysing material evidence from archaeological and environmental perspectives. The project will question the concept of "modernity" as a one-way passage from "traditional" to "modern" societies, in which rural landscapes and societies are seen as passive subjects rather than active agents of change. The basic hypothesis is that industrialisation entailed a complex process of transformation of the rural communities involved, with a far-reaching local and material dimension that has thus far been undervalued, but has played a key role in creating and reproducing social and gender inequalities and in the transformation of the landscape.
Objective
INPACT aims to investigate how the relationship between local communities and their environment changed as rural areas became industrialized, by analysing material evidence from archaeological and environmental perspectives. The project will question the concept of ‘modernity’ as a one-way passage from ‘traditional’ to ‘modern’ societies, in which rural landscapes and societies are seen as passive subjects rather than active agents of change. The project’s basic hypothesis is that the process of industrialization entailed a complex process of transformation of the rural communities involved, with a far-reaching local and material dimension that has thus far been undervalued, but played a key role in creating and reproducing social and gender inequalities and in the transformation of the landscape. This hypothesis will be tested by applying the theoretical background and research strategies of the Archaeology of Environmental Resources and Archaeology of Architecture, joined through the perspective of Social Archaeology. INPACT will carry out an interdisciplinary analysis which takes as its case study the village of Casaio, Galicia (NW Spain), where three specific areas (a set of common lands; a deserted neighbourhood; and a wolfram mine) will be studied. The project comprises five phases (documentary analyses; extra-site and intra-site fieldwork; ethnographic reconstruction; laboratory analyses, including pollen analyses; and data processing and interpretation). The project will allow to analyse how the process of construction of the local community’s cultural heritage today, and thus offering new tools to enhance their material and immaterial memory. INPACT will be carried out by Dr. Carlos Tejerizo at the Laboratory of Environmental Archaeology and History (LASA), at the Università degli Studi in Genoa (UniGe). The supervisor will be LASA’s director, Prof Anna Maria Stagno, and proposes a two month secondment at Karlstad University supervised by Prof Eva Svensson
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Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinator
16126 Genova
Italy