The Political Logic of a Mediterranean Landscape: Southernmost Calabria from 6000 BC to the Present

FAIN: RZ-51699-14

University of Notre Dame (Notre Dame, IN 46556-4635)
Meredith Slater Chesson (Project Director: January 2014 to May 2021)
John E. Robb (Co Project Director: January 2014 to May 2021)

Anthropological and archaeological fieldwork at Bova Marina in Calabria (Italy), analysis of samples, and preparation of a multi-author monograph. (36 months)

How have the human landscapes of the Mediterranean changed through the millenia? What is the historical fact behind the stereotypical images of the "traditional" Italian countryside? This project traces dramatic historical changes over the last 8,000 years in how humans have settled the landscape of rural Calabria, a rugged territory at the tip of the Italian peninsula. Inaccessible hilltop towns, isolated farmsteads, coastal villas, brigand camps, shifting hamlets: Neolithic and Bronze Age people, Greeks, Romans, and medieval people all chose very different, and sometimes to us completely counter-intuitive ways of occupying this challenging and marginal landscape. In bringing to publication almost twenty years of achaeological and historical research, this project shows how historical landscapes integrate ecologies, political order, and the everyday strategies people use to get by, create self-sufficiency and resilience, and protect their political autonomy.

Associated Products

The Political Logic of Mediterrean Landscape (Web Resource)
Title: The Political Logic of Mediterrean Landscape
Author: Meredith Chesson
Abstract: All landscapes, because they have been moulded by human action, are to some extent political. This is particularly evident in the Mediterranean Basin, a crossroad where civilisations have coalesced and often clashed. Although the larger of the Mediterranean Islands have been the home centres of great civilisations (Chapters 3 and 5) during prehistoric times, they have been unable to resist the repeated invasions of mainland-based powers that battled successively for political and commercial authority.
Year: 2014
Primary URL: https://international.nd.edu/events/2018/06/30/conference-the-political-logic-of-mediterranean-landscapes-insights-from-neh-sponsored-archaeological-research-in-southern-calabria/

Carving out a territory: Rhegion, Locri and the households and communities of the classical countryside (Article)
Title: Carving out a territory: Rhegion, Locri and the households and communities of the classical countryside
Author: Lin Foxhall
Author: David Yoon
Abstract: This paper investigates how people enacted multiple, alternative constructions of ‘territory’, using as a case study two neighbouring and often antagonistic ancient Greek city-states of southern Italy, Rhegion and Locri Epizephyrii, focusing primarily on the fifth–fourth centuries bce. We ask how the everyday practices of the inhabitants dwelling in these rural hinterlands shaped their landscapes. Did their lived experience of the landscape map on to the boundaries and models of ‘territory’ presented in the urban-focused written sources? We suggest that though the written sources provide a useful overall context, it is more difficult to connect particular incidents directly with specific archaeological or landscape features. Applying Roman, or modern, concepts of boundaries and borders in this period may be anachronistic. Sovereignty of the urban centres, and even of the most powerful regional rulers, over the lands in the border zone between classical Rhegion and Locri largely appears constrained and patchy.
Year: 2016
Primary URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rwar20
Access Model: subscription only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: World Archaeology
Publisher: World Archaeology 48:3: 431-449

Laborscapes and Archaeologies of Sustainability: An Early Technoscape of Commercial Farming in the San Pasquale Valley, Calabria, Italy from 1800 – 2018 (Article)
Title: Laborscapes and Archaeologies of Sustainability: An Early Technoscape of Commercial Farming in the San Pasquale Valley, Calabria, Italy from 1800 – 2018
Author: Meredith S. Chesson
Author: Isaac I.T. Ullah
Author: Nicholas Ames
Author: Hamish Forbes
Author: Yesenia Garcia
Author: Giovanni Iiriti
Author: Paula K. Lazrus
Author: John Robb
Author: Maria Olimpia Squillaci
Author: Nicholas P.S. Wolff
Abstract: Archaeological research on sustainability enjoys an increasingly high profile in the discipline, with scholars employing a range of methodological and theoretical platforms. We argue that the most successful forays of applied archaeological research into sustainability encompass three major realms: social foundations and local histories of any human community, economic resources and practices to support that community, and environmental and geological couplings existing therein. This paper explores dynamic relationships between these three spheres by discussing how nineteenth and twentieth century farmers, land managers, landowners, and their families in the San Pasquale Valley (SPQV), Calabria, Italy, created and maintained a vibrant community founded for the commercial production of bergamot, mulberries, olives, grapes, and a wide variety of fruit, nut, vegetable, and cereal crops. Our theoretical approach combines Lave and Wenger’s (1991) community of practice approach with Scarborough’s (2009) model of labor- and techno-tasking strategies to document laborscapes through time, using architectural documentation, oral histories, documentary evidence, oral histories, ethnographic interviews, and climate modeling. We demonstrate the interpretive power of incorporating cultural foundations into environmental and economic models to produce more comprehensive understandings of how people succeed and fail to sustain livelihoods and communities. We argue that rhythms and nuances of linkages between SPQV environment, economy, and social worlds require a more flexible conceptualization of sustainability to encompass the variety of solutions developed by current SPQV community members to craft sustainable economic and social futures for themselves.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: http://10.1558/jma.39327
Access Model: subscription only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology
Publisher: Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 32.1: 32-62.

Archaeology as Intellectual Service: Engaged Archaeology in San Pasquale Valley, Calabria, Italy. (Article)
Title: Archaeology as Intellectual Service: Engaged Archaeology in San Pasquale Valley, Calabria, Italy.
Author: Meredith S. Chesson
Author: Isaac I.T. Ullah
Author: Giovanni Iiriti
Author: Hamish Forbes
Author: Paula K. Lazrus
Author: Nicholas Ames
Author: Yesenia Garcia
Author: Sarah Benchekroun
Author: John Robb
Author: Nicholas P.S. Wolff
Author: Maria Olimpia Squillaci
Abstract: Based on recent research in the San Pasquale Valley in southern Calabria, this paper presents our experiences with combining ethnographic and traditional archaeological methodologies to establish a community-serving, rather than strictly research-generating, endeavor.  We argue that truly collaborative projects offer new opportunities for knowledge production and knowledge presentation about the past, and provide a platform for service to our collaborators who make our work possible. Prioritizing process, while acknowledging the need for academic capital, makes us better scientists and offers the key to engaged scholarship.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11759-019-09376-5
Access Model: subscription
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Archaeologies
Publisher: Archaeologies, Journal of the World Archaeological Congress

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