Il Paesaggio come strumento interpretativo. Nuove proposte per vecchi paesaggi

The aim of this paper, with particular reference to the Anglo-Saxon and Mediterranean world, is to analyze the specific way in which the adoption of categories and theoretical positions, together with the adoption of methodological and cognitive procedures and strategies, which were matured within different academic traditions, is fundamental for the reading of a multi-layered landscape. From the argumentative point of view, we will first proceed to a description of the epistemological spaces (theories), operating in the archaeological discipline but also at a more general philosophical level, showing how the processual / post-processual dichotomy is now ineffective for describing the complexity of the real historiographical –archaeological, which frames the ongoing research. The theoretical differences do not end at a general level, as suggested, in a simple dichotomy (modern / postmodern; object / subject; procedural / post-processual), but they take place in normative tendencies that coagulate in different academic traditions, which we will call here Anglo-Continental (US, UK and Northern Europe) and Historical-Mediterranean. Each of these nuclei tended to develop a specific aspect of the discipline, promoting some and only some of the theoretical and methodological premises that emerged from the debate. The assumption of our hypothesis is that, on the one hand, the Anglo-American and North European traditions (with exceptions of course) have greatly developed the theme of time, to arrive at concepts typical of this semantic area such as that of 'Biography of the landscape' or stratifications over the long term. It goes without saying that themes we could define as ontological and phenomenological (perception, expanded and contracted temporality, etc.) have been linked to this tradition. There is an effort here to bridge the gap between past and present, ideally and philosophically bending the space until the present touched the past. This is the genealogy of the post-structuralists and the perception of the post-processualists. The other tradition, on the other hand, which we define as Mediterranean historical-anthropological, of a substantially processualist matrix but geographically placed in the center of the Mediterranean, has developed more methodological and spatial themes, to arrive at concepts of 'Archaeological Continuum' and the development of certain procedures and strategies for the space-oriented archaeological investigation. These traditions are different but both obsessed with filling a real-spatial vacuum, the Mediterranean one, a vacuum of data, between one site and another and a vacuum of archaeological knowledge. Our goal is to provide some key themes through/with which to open a discussion between multiple subjects involved in the construction of contemporary landscapes and in the study of ancient (and future) ones.