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 toanalyze 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 ofview, 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-processualdichotomy is now ineffective for describing the complexity of the real historiographical –archaeological, whichframes the ongoing research. The theoretical differences do not end at a general level, as suggested, in a simpledichotomy (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 specificaspect of the discipline, promoting some and only some of the theoretical and methodological premises thatemerged from the debate. The assumption of our hypothesis is that, on the one hand, the Anglo-American andNorth European traditions (with exceptions of course) have greatly developed the theme of time, to arrive atconcepts typical of this semantic area such as that of 'Biography of the landscape' or stratifications over thelong 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 tobridge 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. Theother 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 moremethodological and spatial themes, to arrive at concepts of 'Archaeological Continuum' and the developmentof certain procedures and strategies for the space-oriented archaeological investigation. These traditions aredifferent 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 keythemes through/with which to open a discussion between multiple subjects involved in the construction ofcontemporary landscapes and in the study of ancient (and future) ones.