APENNINESCAPE. Marginal landscapes and production processes along the Reno and the Bisenzio-Sieve valley districts during the 1st millennium BC

Areas: SH - Social Sciences and Humanities

Abstract:
The Apennines routes have always encouraged connections between the Tyrrhenian and Adriatic regions of Italy, and are pivotal even today. This situation leads to the perception of the Apennines mostly as a border conceived as a marginal and sparsely populated landscape. The APENNINESCAPE project aims at drawing attention to the microecology of the Northern Apennines, an anthropised landscape with a significant historical role, particularly important for those cities which exploited its extensive resources and took advantage of its osmotic function within the Peninsula. The project focuses on settlement, production and environmental resources exploitation strategies and the 1st millennium BC is chosen as the crucial time period during which the formative process of the Etruscan city with its socio-political structure took place. The advent of the city, through the organisation and managment of the controlled territories, imposed a new concept approach of landscape. In the past as today, the city can thus be considered as an agent negotiating the 'marginal landscape', such as the one of the Apennines. The case study will focus on the Reno valley and its tributaries to the north, as well as the Bisenzio and Sieve valleys to the south, two areas that have always been research fields of UNIBO and UNIFI RUs. So far studied separately, they will be analysed as a single entity on a long-term perspective for the first time. The project will be structured within an interdisciplinary approach, integrating multiple skills and technologies of the 3 RUs involved. UNIBO and UNIFI RUs will analyse the settlement and production dynamics within the ancient landscape paying particular attention to the resources of the territory (ores, clay, stones, and also water). Dealing with environmental resources, UNIBO UR will investigate the relationship between the past and the present of the valleys. CNR-UNIPI RU will investigate production processes and related resources across the territories, mainly dealing with the study of mobile finds (pottery, metals and by-products) with morphological, functional, and techno-archaeometric approaches. Together with the other RUs, CNR-UNIPI RU will also contribute to the development of comparative analyses in both the Po Valley and northern Etruria, in order to better identify possible trade routes connecting both districts. The development of digital tools will allow local stakeholders to elaborate new contents starting from the accessible results of the project, encouraging the communities’ reflexivity regarding their relationship with environmental resources and cities, and various touristic impacts. The theoretical and methodological premises of the APENNINESCAPE project, as well as its lines of action, are innovative and original. Moreover, they are perfectly aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, the European NGEU and the national PNRR plans, the Horizon Europe framework programme.

Duration of the project: 28/09/2023 – 28/09/2025

Principal investigator: Andrea Gaucci

Partnership: Università degli Studi di Firenze CNR

Budget of the University of Bologna: 78.618 EUR

ERC sectors: SH6_3 General archaeology, archaeometry, landscape archaeology SH6_2 Classical archaeology, history of archaeology, social archaeology