Constructing territories/constructing identity. Lagoons compared

Abstract

This collection of studies was inspired by the wish to compare a variety of experiences arising from the long-term archaeological research projects into two lagoons on the northern Adriatic shore being carried out by the Medieval Archaeology department at Università Ca’ Foscari. In time, the projects have tended to take very different directions. Moreover, it became apparent that the use of the various sources was itself becoming a matter of debate as well as an important premise for the development of a meaningful form of archaeology. So while still using what might be defined “traditional archaeological sources”, or known materials, the projects also tried out other approaches, by recognising, or rather, constructing partly new archaeological sources that would be capable of increasing the heuristic potential of the documentation available.

The two lagoons being compared are the Venetian and the Comacchio lagoons, which represent two, similar but not identical, paleoenvironmental contexts that produced two important new settlements between late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Although traditional historiography has offered various analyses and explanations for the processes leading to the development of these two urban areas (Venice and Comacchio), the prevailing view has tended to attribute them to migration episodes (albeit ones of limited dimensions). However, studies of these environments and of their transformations (contributions by Corrò, Moine, and Primon on Sant’Ilario, and by Rucco on Comacchio) along with the analysis of emerging communities in competition with each other (contributions by Cadamuro, Cianciosi, and Negrelli on Jesolo and Cittanova, and by Grandi on Comacchio) clearly demonstrate that these processes were not only extremely complex and diversified in time, but were also closely linked to relations with the environment, with land ownership, and trading as well as to different political possibilities. 

This section will analyse and explain four case studies that have been “under observation” for some time. In the case of the monastery of Sant’Ilario e Benedetto di Gambarare (Mira), an innovative geo-archaeological approach was adopted that allowed the history of the religious community (which had ties to the noble family of the Participazio) to be examined parallel to the history of the surrounding area and its resources. The sites of Jesolo, ancient Equilum, and of the neighbouring settlement of Cittanova were analysed in the light of territorial surveys as well as of the important outcomes of new excavations. Comacchio, which has been studied for some years now, is analysed from two points of view: the “traditional” approach examining the development of the settlement (thanks also to the results of recent excavations), and a less obvious approach based on reconstructing the paleoenvironment to improve our understanding of the site’s connections as well as of its relations with available resources.

Though fragmented and tied to the specificity of the single contributions, the picture that emerges is one moving towards the construction of a unitary interpretative paradigm, in which the constructed territory is analysed in all its forms and expressions, both material and ideological. The result is an original and in some ways unique story of a significant segment of early medieval Italian history that has until now been largely neglected by historical studies.