Books by Francesco Ripanti
Whether as excavators and re-enactors, or co-organising research campaigns and outreach activitie... more Whether as excavators and re-enactors, or co-organising research campaigns and outreach activities, the participation of the general public in archaeology has become a well-represented practice, but the impact remains underexplored. Evaluating participation can influence fieldwork practice and enrich the academic discussion on public archaeology.
Far from being a discipline focusing on the past, archaeology has boundless potential for engaging with people in the present. Encounters between archaeologists and the public with different pasts have the potential to create diverse participative dynamics. From the involvement of citizens as excavators and re-enactors to the co-organisation of research campaigns and outreach activities, public participation in archaeology has become a well-represented practice, fully incorporated into European and national cultural policies. However, the impact of this practice remains underexplored.
Unforgettable Encounters demonstrates how evaluating participation can critically influence daily practice on fieldwork, enrich the academic discussion in public archaeology, and inform the decision-making process in community-based planning. The book proposes an operational workflow, aiming to serve as a benchmark for archaeologists delivering collaborative programs in excavation-based projects. It offers a flexible set of tools, analyses, and visualisation boards which can provide a range of information about public participation and can inform the daily practice of fieldwork and the development of community projects. Three Italian case studies present the application of the operational workflow, testing its flexibility and effectiveness. By focusing on Italian community archaeology, this book aims to raise awareness of the importance of evaluating public participation in a country where this commitment has always been evident—especially in excavations—but where research on community archaeology itself has developed only in the last few years.
by Monduzzi Editoriale Cisalpino, Francesco Ripanti, Cinzia Dal Maso, Valentino Nizzo, Alessio Innocenti, Alessandro D'Amore, Andrea Bellotti, Francesca Benetti, Marina Lo Blundo, Carolina Megale, Gabriele Zorzi, paolo vitti, Giovanni Leucci, Paola Romi, and Giacomo Biondi L’archeologo del XXI secolo non vive più di solo studio e scavo. Oggi la moderna ricerca impone d... more L’archeologo del XXI secolo non vive più di solo studio e scavo. Oggi la moderna ricerca impone di affiancare al lavoro in cantiere e ai libri in biblioteca modi sempre nuovi di indagare, comunicare e gestire l’antico. Bastano un po’ di fantasia, versatilità e intraprendenza per dare vita, da archeologo, alle attività più disparate. Come hanno fatto i 34 professionisti che si raccontano in Archeostorie: c’è chi cura un museo e chi gestisce un’area archeologica, chi narra il passato ai bambini e chi lo “fa vedere” ai ciechi, chi usa nel racconto le tecnologie e i linguaggi più diversi e persino i videogame; c’è poi chi ricostruisce l’antico in 3D e chi lo sperimenta dal vivo, chi organizza i dati di scavo e chi li rende disponibili per tutti; c’è chi scrive sui giornali e chi parla di archeologia alla radio o in tivù, chi realizza documentari e chi racconta l’archeologia sui social network; c’è ancora chi punta sul marketing e chi sul crowdfunding, chi fa dell’archeologia un’esperienza per tutti e chi difende le bellezze da furti e scempi. C’è anche chi studia e scava, e nel libro descrive la vita vera di studio e scavo al di là dei miti e dei sogni.
Il risultato è un manuale non convenzionale che offre spunti originali e concreti agli archeologi del futuro in cerca di reali possibilità di occupazione. Una sorta di bottega artigiana dove apprendere i segreti del mestiere, o meglio dei mestieri, che un’archeologia nuova, pragmatica e ancorata nel presente può ispirare.
Book chapters by Francesco Ripanti
Atalay S., McCleary A. (eds.), The Community-Based PhD. Complexities and Triumphs of Conducting CBPR, 2022
This chapter describes how an unexpected situation affected my PhD research, causing methodologic... more This chapter describes how an unexpected situation affected my PhD research, causing methodological challenges, surprising insights and unescapable mistakes. My research project focused on the study of public participation in Italian community archaeology and included three case studies: among these the archaeological area of Massaciuccoli Romana, that experienced a troublesome shift in management while I was through the research.
In 2017, an economic downturn led the Municipality to exclude the local archaeological group from the management of the area, in favour of an external cooperative society. This top-down decision caused divide among the stakeholders and, as soon as I started interviewing them, I realised it was necessary to direct my research focus toward the composition of the conflict, overshadowing the community participation assessment. Collecting opinions by both sides, I got a full picture of the situation and tried to facilitate the dialogue. The tensions among the Municipality and the archaeological group are likely to remain unsolved; however, the knowledge produced by researching the conflict supported a dialogue between the archaeological group and the cooperative.
Although unexpected, when a dissonance about heritage occurs, it cannot be considered a research option, but it needs to be efficiently addressed. To this extent, the acquisition of conflict management strategies and soft skills seem to be of essential importance for the profiles of present and future heritage professionals.
I Pilastri della Terramara. Alle radici di economia società e ambiente nel territorio di Bondeno, 2021
This Chapter presents a preliminary analysis of public participation triggered by the excavations... more This Chapter presents a preliminary analysis of public participation triggered by the excavations of the Terramara di Pilastri. By the means of an original workflow including methods and techniques commonly applied in cultural heritage studies as well as in the fields of anthropological-ethnographic studies, the authors introduce the stakeholders, namely the persons and institutions having an interest in the research, and share the values that each recognizes in the archaeological site. By analyzing six semi-structured interviews of selected stakeholders, the authors are able to state that such participation revolves around four foundational issues: the dig, the local identity, schools and the future. Presenting such themes through the voices of the actors, and framing them in the broader research scenario of public archaeology – both Italian and international – help outlining a quite vivid image of the public participation to the project, and support its critical evaluation.
Van Helden D., Witcher R. (eds.), Researching the Archaeological Past through Imagined Narratives: A necessary fiction, 2020
Community archaeology often takes the form of outreach activities intended to communicate to the ... more Community archaeology often takes the form of outreach activities intended to communicate to the public the final results of archaeological research. Interaction between archaeologists and stakeholders, however, also offers opportunities for the creation and interpretation of archaeological knowledge. Analysis of two Italian case studies, Vignale and Pilastri, provides two examples of the intersection of public archaeology, archaeological interpretation and, specifically, fiction, in the form of a writing competition and a series of docudramas. In both cases, the interaction between archaeologists and stakeholders has produced fictional elements—stories, ideas and inspirations—that have served to reduce the distance between past and present, and to challenge established archaeological thinking. These emergent fictional narratives have proven to be a valuable resource for both projects. Here, the juncture of public archaeology, archaeological interpretation and fiction is framed and investigated within what we define as the ‘multiverse of fiction’.
Bisogna raccontare, sempre di più e meglio. Il passato ha continuo bisogno delle nostre storie pe... more Bisogna raccontare, sempre di più e meglio. Il passato ha continuo bisogno delle nostre storie per conservarsi nel presente. Perché sono le storie a tenere in vita il mondo, a creare le comunità: si dice che una civiltà che non racconta più storie, è destinata a frantumarsi e morire. Nei musei, le storie dannovita agli oggetti, e ci fanno sentire il contatto diretto con la vita vera di altri mondi.
Ma raccontare è un’arte: in realtà un misto di conoscenze, tecnica e arte. E quando il racconto entra in museo, le ultime due devono piegarsi alla conoscenza, essere al servizio del messaggio del museo. La fantasia deve seguire binari precisi. E per fare questo, servono persone capaci di narrare e al contempo dialogare con la ricerca scientifica. Professionisti che sappiano restituire la vita con la penna, i pennelli, la macchina fotografica, la cinepresa, la grafica, la realtà virtuale, i social media. Ogni strumento possibile, anche quello che ancora non c’è: perché l’importante non è lo strumento ma la storia.
Questo libro delinea le caratteristiche del ‘narratore da museo’ e le tecniche che deve mettere in campo. Realizzato dal team del Centro studi per l’archeologia pubblica Archeostorie®, si propone come prima guida per chiunque voglia cimentarsi nell’arte del racconto da museo. Chiunque voglia, grazie al racconto, creare attorno al museo una vera comunità.
Papers by Francesco Ripanti
Journal of Community Archaeology & Heritage, 2021
Opinions and practices in regard to public participation in archaeology vary widely in different ... more Opinions and practices in regard to public participation in archaeology vary widely in different countries. While so-called 'community digs' and other forms of participation are very common in the UK and volunteering opportunities can be easily found on the internet, the situation in Germany and Italy is different. Although public participation does exist in the two continental countries, it is not as widespread as in the UK, because of various different obstacles, e.g. permit systems. To identify the challenges that archaeologists have to face when working with the public as well as to better understand professional archaeologists' attitudes towards public participation and see whether different laws and policies have shaped them, a survey was conducted amongst British, German and Italian archaeologists.
International Committee for Architecture & Museum Techniques - Online Conference Papers, 2020
Social distancing is currently the international disease control standard as a response to the sp... more Social distancing is currently the international disease control standard as a response to the spread of Covid-19. This situation has brought many significant challenges to Cultural Heritage (CH) professionals and associated institutions. Although physical patronage at museums has dropped significantly, there are opportunities for retaining and possibly increasing viewership by using the latest virtual reality technology (VR) and other advanced multimedia tools. To be better informed, it is helpful to look at sectors outside of CH that have made an effective integration of these systems and methods. A comparative precedent is the international medical sector, which actively employs advanced VR for education, research and daily practice. The field has been highly active in the integration of VR to effectively address issues such as enhanced training, communication, public/professional engagement and remote access.
For both CH and medicine, developing VR content is time-consuming, and the associated computer hardware and associated exhibition equipment can be exceptionally expensive. By drawing upon state-of-the-art research and applied activities from the field of medicine, the proposed paper will look at specific precedents that would be of direct interest and benefit to CH. Looking at methods such as digital documentation, virtualization, 3D presentation, AR interaction, haptic systems, and other VR tools.
The suggested topics will be discussed within the framework of the EU ERA Chair in Digital CH, project “MNEMOSYNE”, which aims to propose systems, guidelines, and standards for the holistic documentation of Digital Cultural Heritage.
Public Archaeology, 2019
Over the last decade public and community archaeology have established themselves as essential pa... more Over the last decade public and community archaeology have established themselves as essential parts of the Italian contemporary archaeological debate, as a result of work at a series of venues and a growing commitment to public engagement within fieldwork. However, data and evaluation reports about participation are rarely found in academic literature, limiting the development of a critical attitude to the topic.
This paper attempts to outline a specific scenario for the development of
Italian community archaeology as a proper field of research. This scenario consists of two main stages: the development of a shared attitude to evaluation and the creation of a native theoretical framework. Between them there is the ‘intermediate level’, that may be properly considered as the comparison and interpretation of the data resulting from the multiple evaluation processes conducted in Italian community archaeology projects in the context of the existing international theoretical framework.
The brief presentation of an evaluation process conducted for the case study of ‘Uomini e Cose a Vignale’ — a long-term excavation project in Tuscany jointly managed by archaeologists and local stakeholders — fosters a reflection on specific opportunities provided by conceiving evaluation as a first step toward an ‘intermediate level’.
IL CAPITALE CULTURALE Studies on the Value of Cultural Heritage, 2019
Uomini e Cose a Vignale (Peoples and Things at Vignale) is a community archaeology project based ... more Uomini e Cose a Vignale (Peoples and Things at Vignale) is a community archaeology project based in the territory of Riotorto, a rural neighbourhood of the Municipality of Piombino, in Tuscany. Since 2004, the University of Siena carried out the excavation of a Roman villa and mansio and established deep connections with the surrounding area. Thanks to the direct involvement of local stakeholders – intended both as members of the resident community (i.e. schools, cultural associations, companies and laypeople) and of bystanders (i.e. tourists) – the project developed specific traits that may be considered innovative, especially in
terms of economic management largely based on crowdfunding and crowdsourcing strategies. Introducing some of these traits and presenting a recent evaluation of the project, the aim of this paper is to critically address the social, intellectual and economic sustainability of Uomini e Cose a Vignale over time.
Advances in Archaeological Practice, 6 (3), 2018
During the 2014 excavation campaign at Vignale an impressive late antique mosaic depicting Aion, ... more During the 2014 excavation campaign at Vignale an impressive late antique mosaic depicting Aion, the God of Time, was discovered. This artifact of 100 m2 became a milestone for outreach activities; fund-raising, theatrical performances, and archaeological trekking sessions were tailored to this finding, in collaboration with local associations. The discovery of the mosaic consolidated the promotional lines followed for this project, on-site and off-site, capable of engaging different audiences. Taking into account the recent debate about emotion as an essential constituent of the heritage-making process, a preliminary analysis of these initiatives questions the existence and the development of an emotional connection between the public and the archaeological site. Since an emotional connection emerged, further analyses and studies need to specify the kinds of emotive connection that occur. Assessment of the emotional impact intrinsic to public outreach will provide clues to transforming the “intellectual” emotion of discovery into a shared and valuable emotion for the benefit of both the archaeological project and its stakeholders.
MUSEUM.DIÀ II° CONVEGNO INTERNAZIONALE DI MUSEOLOGIA Chronos, Kairòs e Aion. Il tempo dei musei Atti dell’Incontro Internazionale di Studi, 265–286. Roma: E.S.S. Editorial Service System, 2018
Voci di oggetti nel buio, storie di personaggi dimenticati, emozioni che riemergono dal tempo.
C... more Voci di oggetti nel buio, storie di personaggi dimenticati, emozioni che riemergono dal tempo.
Con il nuovo progetto multimediale “Il museo a portata di mano”, il Museo archeologico nazionale delle Marche ha voluto rinnovare il viaggio dei visitatori nelle tre sezioni preistorica, picena e romana attraverso l’ausilio di nuovi linguaggi di comunicazione. Tavoli multi-touch e vetrine interattive introducono alle sezioni, dove sono disponibili anche diversi percorsi di audioguida, realizzati con la app IZI.travel, ciascuno declinato in tre versioni: per adulti, per bambini e le storie. All’ingresso del Museo un tavolo multi-touch orienta il visitatore in base ai suoi interessi e al tempo disponibile per la visita, con uno spazio dedicato anche a Palazzo Ferretti, la magnifica dimora cinquecentesca che ospita le collezioni del Museo.
Il presente contributo illustra le nuove modalità che accompagnano il visitatore attraverso le sale del Museo e lo orientano rispetto ai molteplici tempi in esso racchiusi: dall’epoca in cui fu costruito il Palazzo, ai tempi, assai distanti tra loro e multiprospettici, che riaffiorano dai racconti dei vari reperti, contenuti nell’audioguida.
Le storie raccontano il museo dalla preistoria all’età romana, dando voce a 25 tra gli oggetti più significativi delle collezioni, mediando tra la spiegazione didascalica e la narrazione, per trasmettere informazioni in modo coinvolgente. Bifacciali, brocche in ceramica, urne cinerarie, pendagli piceni, gemme ellenistiche e molti altri reperti riconducono il visitatore nel passato, trasformandosi nei protagonisti di storie verosimili, che non perdono mai di vista l’irrinunciabile base scientifica. Ogni volta si pone l’accento su aspetti diversi: l’importanza e l’emozione di una scoperta, un oggetto che entra in azione, pagine di diario degli archeologi, un aneddoto del reperto legato alla vita del museo, un regalo romantico, vengono messi in scena attraverso interviste, monologhi, lettere e racconti in prima e terza persona, cercando la prospettiva migliore per stimolare la curiosità.
Archeologia e Calcolatori, 2017
The use of interactive storytelling by museums and heritage sites lends to the creation of experi... more The use of interactive storytelling by museums and heritage sites lends to the creation of experiences that support visitors in engaging emotionally with the objects on display. Finding ways to connect to the cultural content is even more important for visitors of archaeological sites due to the often fragmentary nature of the exhibits, which can leave them wondering what was once there and how it relates to them. In this paper, we describe the creation of a prototype mobile storytelling experience that attempts to explore a more emotive kind of storytelling in cultural contexts. The prototype was evaluated in a preliminary study that took place at the archaeological site of the Ancient Agora of Athens. The observations provide insights for the design of future iterations of such emotive storytelling experiences. © 2017 Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche. All rights reserved.
Archeostorie. Journal of Public Archaeology, 2017
In recent years, Italian field archaeology has displayed a growing interest in civic engagement. ... more In recent years, Italian field archaeology has displayed a growing interest in civic engagement. Several ongoing excavation projects have shown both benefits and drawbacks of developing a closer collaboration with non-archaeologists. Through creative and original public outreach activities they have certainly succeeded in reaching different audiences, but problems still remain: there is neither a shared methodology, nor a solid academic background and debate. Is there such a thing, thus, as Italian public archaeology? This paper addresses this crucial question by looking closely at a variety of outreach activities developed by a few Italian excavation projects, and contextualizing them in the framework of public archaeology studies from a global perspective.
Statio Amoena - Sostare e vivere lungo le strade romane (Patrizia Basso and Enrico Zanini eds.)
Primary responsibility of an archaeologist is to explain to the public what he’s digging and he m... more Primary responsibility of an archaeologist is to explain to the public what he’s digging and he must strive to do it in the most engaging and stirring way as possible, using the most appropriate language.
This is one of the challenges of public archaeology that we daily face in Vignale.
Vignale is a Roman farm, villa and posting station situated in Val di Cornia (Tuscany, Italy) and since 2005 under excavation by University of Siena (see Giorgi in this volume).
One of the main features of the site is the lack of clear and visible evidences: the poor state of preservation makes even more complicated to illustrate a hardly definible structure - and difficult to imagine - as a mansio is.
The effort of understanding is so high that the usual guided tours are insufficient to suggest the visitors concrete images of the posting station and how it worked.
This paper focuses on how we handled this situation using public archaeology oriented strategies and how this approach was capable to generate virtuous mechanisms between the “Uomini e cose a Vignale” research project and the local community.
As emerging from the theoretical framework (see Merriman 2004, Schadla Hall 2006), public archaeology doesn’t have an univocal definition, but it’s declinable in different ways depending on the cultural and social context and on the methodological approaches (Matsuda, Okamura 2011, 2).
In our situation, public archaeology is the engine of a complex process, based on the continuous balance and the mutual stimulus between scientific research and our relationship with the local community. This process, as theorized by Matsuda and Okamura (2011, 4), is conceived as a dynamic endeavor, which consists of an everevolving two-stage cycle comprinsing the creation of the relationship with the people (research) and its consolidation through the active participation to the ongoing project (action).
Our approach, called "Excava(c)tion" (see Costa, Ripanti 2013), is not limited to the narration of the mansio but covers the other phases of use of the site. This approach takes place on the Web - with a website (www.uominiecoseavignale.it) and a related Facebook page - and mainly on the fieldwork.
Since the beginning of our research, we have taken advantage from its position of high visibility near a highway. This circumstance has lead a lot of people to the site and has requested us to think about our communication strategy and the way of interacting with the public. We chose a more effective, direct and comprehensible communication using narration and emotion and avoiding unnecessary technical words.
Depending on the kind of public, we propose specific activities, as laboratory and didactic work for children on the site and in classroom, dinner with figures in costume, archaeological hiking, theatrical performances and docudrama.
Usually people come to the site while we are working. To explain the poorly preserved mansio we stage different performances which involve the archaeologists themselves. For example, when we need to talk about the colonnade of the porch, each archaeologist mimes a column with its body standing in the exact position around the central courtyard. Moreover, especially when dealing with children, we perform the scene of the arrival of an horseman to the mansio in order to explain where the entrance was and how the spaces were organized.
Since 2014, our performances have been improved by the active help of the local associations. With their collaboration, we manage to organize more structured events, like “Una notte romana a Vignale”. In this occasion we opened the site in the evening, staging a theatrical performance in the mansio and setting up a refreshment point outside the fence.
What we propose is our idea of public archaeology: an archaeology that decodes the traces of the past; an archaeology that talks and deal with the community in which the site is situated; an archaeology that means social responsibility because translates the traces of the past in identity.
MapPapers 1-IV, 2014, pp. 5-10, May 2014
Archaeology, video and storytelling are words that should go together in the world of heritage co... more Archaeology, video and storytelling are words that should go together in the world of heritage communication. Usually you don't see archaeologists with a camera in their hands just only because they don't know that videos can tell stories of archaeology in a very involving way. Video storytelling is part of “Digital Narrative” and “Visual Narrative” and archaeology is closely linked with these because it's a inexhaustible container of stories.
In this paper you find different examples of video storytelling made by archaeologists. Docudrama is the genre more experienced in the Roman site of Vignale: archaeologists perform as actors, reenacting in a likely way an ancient event in front of the camera. Recording a story, they tell what has happened during the fieldwork in a narrative way. Other examples of video storytelling are some dialogues through archaeologists and the stories of professional archaeologists. Sit down and see some archeovideos!
ArcheoFoss 2012 in Archeologia e Calcolatori, Supplemento 4, 2013, 174-180, 2013
This paper discusses some new perspectives about communication in archaeology. The main direction... more This paper discusses some new perspectives about communication in archaeology. The main direction in recent years seems to go toward the increased use of new technologies by the same archaeologists who dig in a site and are not specialists in computer science and communication. So far these new technologies have been used in the search of better communications but they have been developed individually. Furthermore, the focus has been on the instruments rather than on the contents of the communication. Our proposal is to put together different media in order to enhance the potentiality of the same communication. For example, the use of 3D and “docudrama” together can enhance both the visual and narrative aspects of communication. In this paper we show a possible interaction of 3D and “docudrama” applied to the archaeological site of Vignale (Livorno, Italy), and discuss their benefits and drawbacks and the useful relationship between this creative approach of communication and the open source philosophy.
Arqueologia Publica, 2013
As an orchestra or a rock star, archaeologists have their audience
too. This paper wants to high... more As an orchestra or a rock star, archaeologists have their audience
too. This paper wants to highlight an integrated approach between
fieldwork, its account and its dissemination to the public in different ways, including social media. This potential integration has come to life in the 2011 excavation of the Roman mansio of Vignale (Italy) and it has been named “Excava(c)tion”. It doesn’t mean a new way of digging but another way of approaching the excavation, an approach integrated toward and with the public, both on site and on the social Web.
“Excava(c)tion” conceives the site as a stage and digging as a performance, through a continuous dialogue between archaeologists and the public. Archaeologists share their work in the form of guided tours (live, theatrical-like performances), communicative diaries and
videos (edited, motion-picture performances) and on a blog (www.uominiecoseavignale.it). They receive back comments and oral accounts from the local community about the main themes of common interest.
“Excava(c)tion” means engagement both of archaeologists and the public in the pursuit of a global multivocality during archaeological excavation.
Archeologia e Calcolatori, 2012
Methodological reflection on communication in archaeology greatly developed over the past fifteen... more Methodological reflection on communication in archaeology greatly developed over the past fifteen years. It is now widely accepted that video-narrative medium has a larger potential compared with other media commonly used up to now. The archaeological video can be divided into some different categories - documentary, video update, docudrama - each of them potentially destined to a variety of audiences when the movie is inserted into a narrative framework. By its nature, the archaeological site of Vignale, where the relative poverty of the remains on the ground sharply contrasts with the richness of the 'stories' the site itself can narrate, is an ideal place to test the docudrama-model video. Initially intended to be just an instrument for communicating with and involving local population in the archaeological project as a whole, the video-narrative proved to be a powerful tool in stimulating the research group itself towards a more thoughtful and 'multivocal' recording of the fieldwork done. The output of the project was the making of a brief 'series' of videos, with the general title of 'The Excavation and its Stories. They were initially used as an educational support for younger students in archaeology, but later obtained a wider audience through the web.
Reviews by Francesco Ripanti
Archeostorie. Journal of Public Archaeology, 2018
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Books by Francesco Ripanti
Far from being a discipline focusing on the past, archaeology has boundless potential for engaging with people in the present. Encounters between archaeologists and the public with different pasts have the potential to create diverse participative dynamics. From the involvement of citizens as excavators and re-enactors to the co-organisation of research campaigns and outreach activities, public participation in archaeology has become a well-represented practice, fully incorporated into European and national cultural policies. However, the impact of this practice remains underexplored.
Unforgettable Encounters demonstrates how evaluating participation can critically influence daily practice on fieldwork, enrich the academic discussion in public archaeology, and inform the decision-making process in community-based planning. The book proposes an operational workflow, aiming to serve as a benchmark for archaeologists delivering collaborative programs in excavation-based projects. It offers a flexible set of tools, analyses, and visualisation boards which can provide a range of information about public participation and can inform the daily practice of fieldwork and the development of community projects. Three Italian case studies present the application of the operational workflow, testing its flexibility and effectiveness. By focusing on Italian community archaeology, this book aims to raise awareness of the importance of evaluating public participation in a country where this commitment has always been evident—especially in excavations—but where research on community archaeology itself has developed only in the last few years.
Il risultato è un manuale non convenzionale che offre spunti originali e concreti agli archeologi del futuro in cerca di reali possibilità di occupazione. Una sorta di bottega artigiana dove apprendere i segreti del mestiere, o meglio dei mestieri, che un’archeologia nuova, pragmatica e ancorata nel presente può ispirare.
Book chapters by Francesco Ripanti
In 2017, an economic downturn led the Municipality to exclude the local archaeological group from the management of the area, in favour of an external cooperative society. This top-down decision caused divide among the stakeholders and, as soon as I started interviewing them, I realised it was necessary to direct my research focus toward the composition of the conflict, overshadowing the community participation assessment. Collecting opinions by both sides, I got a full picture of the situation and tried to facilitate the dialogue. The tensions among the Municipality and the archaeological group are likely to remain unsolved; however, the knowledge produced by researching the conflict supported a dialogue between the archaeological group and the cooperative.
Although unexpected, when a dissonance about heritage occurs, it cannot be considered a research option, but it needs to be efficiently addressed. To this extent, the acquisition of conflict management strategies and soft skills seem to be of essential importance for the profiles of present and future heritage professionals.
Ma raccontare è un’arte: in realtà un misto di conoscenze, tecnica e arte. E quando il racconto entra in museo, le ultime due devono piegarsi alla conoscenza, essere al servizio del messaggio del museo. La fantasia deve seguire binari precisi. E per fare questo, servono persone capaci di narrare e al contempo dialogare con la ricerca scientifica. Professionisti che sappiano restituire la vita con la penna, i pennelli, la macchina fotografica, la cinepresa, la grafica, la realtà virtuale, i social media. Ogni strumento possibile, anche quello che ancora non c’è: perché l’importante non è lo strumento ma la storia.
Questo libro delinea le caratteristiche del ‘narratore da museo’ e le tecniche che deve mettere in campo. Realizzato dal team del Centro studi per l’archeologia pubblica Archeostorie®, si propone come prima guida per chiunque voglia cimentarsi nell’arte del racconto da museo. Chiunque voglia, grazie al racconto, creare attorno al museo una vera comunità.
Papers by Francesco Ripanti
For both CH and medicine, developing VR content is time-consuming, and the associated computer hardware and associated exhibition equipment can be exceptionally expensive. By drawing upon state-of-the-art research and applied activities from the field of medicine, the proposed paper will look at specific precedents that would be of direct interest and benefit to CH. Looking at methods such as digital documentation, virtualization, 3D presentation, AR interaction, haptic systems, and other VR tools.
The suggested topics will be discussed within the framework of the EU ERA Chair in Digital CH, project “MNEMOSYNE”, which aims to propose systems, guidelines, and standards for the holistic documentation of Digital Cultural Heritage.
This paper attempts to outline a specific scenario for the development of
Italian community archaeology as a proper field of research. This scenario consists of two main stages: the development of a shared attitude to evaluation and the creation of a native theoretical framework. Between them there is the ‘intermediate level’, that may be properly considered as the comparison and interpretation of the data resulting from the multiple evaluation processes conducted in Italian community archaeology projects in the context of the existing international theoretical framework.
The brief presentation of an evaluation process conducted for the case study of ‘Uomini e Cose a Vignale’ — a long-term excavation project in Tuscany jointly managed by archaeologists and local stakeholders — fosters a reflection on specific opportunities provided by conceiving evaluation as a first step toward an ‘intermediate level’.
terms of economic management largely based on crowdfunding and crowdsourcing strategies. Introducing some of these traits and presenting a recent evaluation of the project, the aim of this paper is to critically address the social, intellectual and economic sustainability of Uomini e Cose a Vignale over time.
Con il nuovo progetto multimediale “Il museo a portata di mano”, il Museo archeologico nazionale delle Marche ha voluto rinnovare il viaggio dei visitatori nelle tre sezioni preistorica, picena e romana attraverso l’ausilio di nuovi linguaggi di comunicazione. Tavoli multi-touch e vetrine interattive introducono alle sezioni, dove sono disponibili anche diversi percorsi di audioguida, realizzati con la app IZI.travel, ciascuno declinato in tre versioni: per adulti, per bambini e le storie. All’ingresso del Museo un tavolo multi-touch orienta il visitatore in base ai suoi interessi e al tempo disponibile per la visita, con uno spazio dedicato anche a Palazzo Ferretti, la magnifica dimora cinquecentesca che ospita le collezioni del Museo.
Il presente contributo illustra le nuove modalità che accompagnano il visitatore attraverso le sale del Museo e lo orientano rispetto ai molteplici tempi in esso racchiusi: dall’epoca in cui fu costruito il Palazzo, ai tempi, assai distanti tra loro e multiprospettici, che riaffiorano dai racconti dei vari reperti, contenuti nell’audioguida.
Le storie raccontano il museo dalla preistoria all’età romana, dando voce a 25 tra gli oggetti più significativi delle collezioni, mediando tra la spiegazione didascalica e la narrazione, per trasmettere informazioni in modo coinvolgente. Bifacciali, brocche in ceramica, urne cinerarie, pendagli piceni, gemme ellenistiche e molti altri reperti riconducono il visitatore nel passato, trasformandosi nei protagonisti di storie verosimili, che non perdono mai di vista l’irrinunciabile base scientifica. Ogni volta si pone l’accento su aspetti diversi: l’importanza e l’emozione di una scoperta, un oggetto che entra in azione, pagine di diario degli archeologi, un aneddoto del reperto legato alla vita del museo, un regalo romantico, vengono messi in scena attraverso interviste, monologhi, lettere e racconti in prima e terza persona, cercando la prospettiva migliore per stimolare la curiosità.
This is one of the challenges of public archaeology that we daily face in Vignale.
Vignale is a Roman farm, villa and posting station situated in Val di Cornia (Tuscany, Italy) and since 2005 under excavation by University of Siena (see Giorgi in this volume).
One of the main features of the site is the lack of clear and visible evidences: the poor state of preservation makes even more complicated to illustrate a hardly definible structure - and difficult to imagine - as a mansio is.
The effort of understanding is so high that the usual guided tours are insufficient to suggest the visitors concrete images of the posting station and how it worked.
This paper focuses on how we handled this situation using public archaeology oriented strategies and how this approach was capable to generate virtuous mechanisms between the “Uomini e cose a Vignale” research project and the local community.
As emerging from the theoretical framework (see Merriman 2004, Schadla Hall 2006), public archaeology doesn’t have an univocal definition, but it’s declinable in different ways depending on the cultural and social context and on the methodological approaches (Matsuda, Okamura 2011, 2).
In our situation, public archaeology is the engine of a complex process, based on the continuous balance and the mutual stimulus between scientific research and our relationship with the local community. This process, as theorized by Matsuda and Okamura (2011, 4), is conceived as a dynamic endeavor, which consists of an everevolving two-stage cycle comprinsing the creation of the relationship with the people (research) and its consolidation through the active participation to the ongoing project (action).
Our approach, called "Excava(c)tion" (see Costa, Ripanti 2013), is not limited to the narration of the mansio but covers the other phases of use of the site. This approach takes place on the Web - with a website (www.uominiecoseavignale.it) and a related Facebook page - and mainly on the fieldwork.
Since the beginning of our research, we have taken advantage from its position of high visibility near a highway. This circumstance has lead a lot of people to the site and has requested us to think about our communication strategy and the way of interacting with the public. We chose a more effective, direct and comprehensible communication using narration and emotion and avoiding unnecessary technical words.
Depending on the kind of public, we propose specific activities, as laboratory and didactic work for children on the site and in classroom, dinner with figures in costume, archaeological hiking, theatrical performances and docudrama.
Usually people come to the site while we are working. To explain the poorly preserved mansio we stage different performances which involve the archaeologists themselves. For example, when we need to talk about the colonnade of the porch, each archaeologist mimes a column with its body standing in the exact position around the central courtyard. Moreover, especially when dealing with children, we perform the scene of the arrival of an horseman to the mansio in order to explain where the entrance was and how the spaces were organized.
Since 2014, our performances have been improved by the active help of the local associations. With their collaboration, we manage to organize more structured events, like “Una notte romana a Vignale”. In this occasion we opened the site in the evening, staging a theatrical performance in the mansio and setting up a refreshment point outside the fence.
What we propose is our idea of public archaeology: an archaeology that decodes the traces of the past; an archaeology that talks and deal with the community in which the site is situated; an archaeology that means social responsibility because translates the traces of the past in identity.
In this paper you find different examples of video storytelling made by archaeologists. Docudrama is the genre more experienced in the Roman site of Vignale: archaeologists perform as actors, reenacting in a likely way an ancient event in front of the camera. Recording a story, they tell what has happened during the fieldwork in a narrative way. Other examples of video storytelling are some dialogues through archaeologists and the stories of professional archaeologists. Sit down and see some archeovideos!
too. This paper wants to highlight an integrated approach between
fieldwork, its account and its dissemination to the public in different ways, including social media. This potential integration has come to life in the 2011 excavation of the Roman mansio of Vignale (Italy) and it has been named “Excava(c)tion”. It doesn’t mean a new way of digging but another way of approaching the excavation, an approach integrated toward and with the public, both on site and on the social Web.
“Excava(c)tion” conceives the site as a stage and digging as a performance, through a continuous dialogue between archaeologists and the public. Archaeologists share their work in the form of guided tours (live, theatrical-like performances), communicative diaries and
videos (edited, motion-picture performances) and on a blog (www.uominiecoseavignale.it). They receive back comments and oral accounts from the local community about the main themes of common interest.
“Excava(c)tion” means engagement both of archaeologists and the public in the pursuit of a global multivocality during archaeological excavation.
Reviews by Francesco Ripanti
Far from being a discipline focusing on the past, archaeology has boundless potential for engaging with people in the present. Encounters between archaeologists and the public with different pasts have the potential to create diverse participative dynamics. From the involvement of citizens as excavators and re-enactors to the co-organisation of research campaigns and outreach activities, public participation in archaeology has become a well-represented practice, fully incorporated into European and national cultural policies. However, the impact of this practice remains underexplored.
Unforgettable Encounters demonstrates how evaluating participation can critically influence daily practice on fieldwork, enrich the academic discussion in public archaeology, and inform the decision-making process in community-based planning. The book proposes an operational workflow, aiming to serve as a benchmark for archaeologists delivering collaborative programs in excavation-based projects. It offers a flexible set of tools, analyses, and visualisation boards which can provide a range of information about public participation and can inform the daily practice of fieldwork and the development of community projects. Three Italian case studies present the application of the operational workflow, testing its flexibility and effectiveness. By focusing on Italian community archaeology, this book aims to raise awareness of the importance of evaluating public participation in a country where this commitment has always been evident—especially in excavations—but where research on community archaeology itself has developed only in the last few years.
Il risultato è un manuale non convenzionale che offre spunti originali e concreti agli archeologi del futuro in cerca di reali possibilità di occupazione. Una sorta di bottega artigiana dove apprendere i segreti del mestiere, o meglio dei mestieri, che un’archeologia nuova, pragmatica e ancorata nel presente può ispirare.
In 2017, an economic downturn led the Municipality to exclude the local archaeological group from the management of the area, in favour of an external cooperative society. This top-down decision caused divide among the stakeholders and, as soon as I started interviewing them, I realised it was necessary to direct my research focus toward the composition of the conflict, overshadowing the community participation assessment. Collecting opinions by both sides, I got a full picture of the situation and tried to facilitate the dialogue. The tensions among the Municipality and the archaeological group are likely to remain unsolved; however, the knowledge produced by researching the conflict supported a dialogue between the archaeological group and the cooperative.
Although unexpected, when a dissonance about heritage occurs, it cannot be considered a research option, but it needs to be efficiently addressed. To this extent, the acquisition of conflict management strategies and soft skills seem to be of essential importance for the profiles of present and future heritage professionals.
Ma raccontare è un’arte: in realtà un misto di conoscenze, tecnica e arte. E quando il racconto entra in museo, le ultime due devono piegarsi alla conoscenza, essere al servizio del messaggio del museo. La fantasia deve seguire binari precisi. E per fare questo, servono persone capaci di narrare e al contempo dialogare con la ricerca scientifica. Professionisti che sappiano restituire la vita con la penna, i pennelli, la macchina fotografica, la cinepresa, la grafica, la realtà virtuale, i social media. Ogni strumento possibile, anche quello che ancora non c’è: perché l’importante non è lo strumento ma la storia.
Questo libro delinea le caratteristiche del ‘narratore da museo’ e le tecniche che deve mettere in campo. Realizzato dal team del Centro studi per l’archeologia pubblica Archeostorie®, si propone come prima guida per chiunque voglia cimentarsi nell’arte del racconto da museo. Chiunque voglia, grazie al racconto, creare attorno al museo una vera comunità.
For both CH and medicine, developing VR content is time-consuming, and the associated computer hardware and associated exhibition equipment can be exceptionally expensive. By drawing upon state-of-the-art research and applied activities from the field of medicine, the proposed paper will look at specific precedents that would be of direct interest and benefit to CH. Looking at methods such as digital documentation, virtualization, 3D presentation, AR interaction, haptic systems, and other VR tools.
The suggested topics will be discussed within the framework of the EU ERA Chair in Digital CH, project “MNEMOSYNE”, which aims to propose systems, guidelines, and standards for the holistic documentation of Digital Cultural Heritage.
This paper attempts to outline a specific scenario for the development of
Italian community archaeology as a proper field of research. This scenario consists of two main stages: the development of a shared attitude to evaluation and the creation of a native theoretical framework. Between them there is the ‘intermediate level’, that may be properly considered as the comparison and interpretation of the data resulting from the multiple evaluation processes conducted in Italian community archaeology projects in the context of the existing international theoretical framework.
The brief presentation of an evaluation process conducted for the case study of ‘Uomini e Cose a Vignale’ — a long-term excavation project in Tuscany jointly managed by archaeologists and local stakeholders — fosters a reflection on specific opportunities provided by conceiving evaluation as a first step toward an ‘intermediate level’.
terms of economic management largely based on crowdfunding and crowdsourcing strategies. Introducing some of these traits and presenting a recent evaluation of the project, the aim of this paper is to critically address the social, intellectual and economic sustainability of Uomini e Cose a Vignale over time.
Con il nuovo progetto multimediale “Il museo a portata di mano”, il Museo archeologico nazionale delle Marche ha voluto rinnovare il viaggio dei visitatori nelle tre sezioni preistorica, picena e romana attraverso l’ausilio di nuovi linguaggi di comunicazione. Tavoli multi-touch e vetrine interattive introducono alle sezioni, dove sono disponibili anche diversi percorsi di audioguida, realizzati con la app IZI.travel, ciascuno declinato in tre versioni: per adulti, per bambini e le storie. All’ingresso del Museo un tavolo multi-touch orienta il visitatore in base ai suoi interessi e al tempo disponibile per la visita, con uno spazio dedicato anche a Palazzo Ferretti, la magnifica dimora cinquecentesca che ospita le collezioni del Museo.
Il presente contributo illustra le nuove modalità che accompagnano il visitatore attraverso le sale del Museo e lo orientano rispetto ai molteplici tempi in esso racchiusi: dall’epoca in cui fu costruito il Palazzo, ai tempi, assai distanti tra loro e multiprospettici, che riaffiorano dai racconti dei vari reperti, contenuti nell’audioguida.
Le storie raccontano il museo dalla preistoria all’età romana, dando voce a 25 tra gli oggetti più significativi delle collezioni, mediando tra la spiegazione didascalica e la narrazione, per trasmettere informazioni in modo coinvolgente. Bifacciali, brocche in ceramica, urne cinerarie, pendagli piceni, gemme ellenistiche e molti altri reperti riconducono il visitatore nel passato, trasformandosi nei protagonisti di storie verosimili, che non perdono mai di vista l’irrinunciabile base scientifica. Ogni volta si pone l’accento su aspetti diversi: l’importanza e l’emozione di una scoperta, un oggetto che entra in azione, pagine di diario degli archeologi, un aneddoto del reperto legato alla vita del museo, un regalo romantico, vengono messi in scena attraverso interviste, monologhi, lettere e racconti in prima e terza persona, cercando la prospettiva migliore per stimolare la curiosità.
This is one of the challenges of public archaeology that we daily face in Vignale.
Vignale is a Roman farm, villa and posting station situated in Val di Cornia (Tuscany, Italy) and since 2005 under excavation by University of Siena (see Giorgi in this volume).
One of the main features of the site is the lack of clear and visible evidences: the poor state of preservation makes even more complicated to illustrate a hardly definible structure - and difficult to imagine - as a mansio is.
The effort of understanding is so high that the usual guided tours are insufficient to suggest the visitors concrete images of the posting station and how it worked.
This paper focuses on how we handled this situation using public archaeology oriented strategies and how this approach was capable to generate virtuous mechanisms between the “Uomini e cose a Vignale” research project and the local community.
As emerging from the theoretical framework (see Merriman 2004, Schadla Hall 2006), public archaeology doesn’t have an univocal definition, but it’s declinable in different ways depending on the cultural and social context and on the methodological approaches (Matsuda, Okamura 2011, 2).
In our situation, public archaeology is the engine of a complex process, based on the continuous balance and the mutual stimulus between scientific research and our relationship with the local community. This process, as theorized by Matsuda and Okamura (2011, 4), is conceived as a dynamic endeavor, which consists of an everevolving two-stage cycle comprinsing the creation of the relationship with the people (research) and its consolidation through the active participation to the ongoing project (action).
Our approach, called "Excava(c)tion" (see Costa, Ripanti 2013), is not limited to the narration of the mansio but covers the other phases of use of the site. This approach takes place on the Web - with a website (www.uominiecoseavignale.it) and a related Facebook page - and mainly on the fieldwork.
Since the beginning of our research, we have taken advantage from its position of high visibility near a highway. This circumstance has lead a lot of people to the site and has requested us to think about our communication strategy and the way of interacting with the public. We chose a more effective, direct and comprehensible communication using narration and emotion and avoiding unnecessary technical words.
Depending on the kind of public, we propose specific activities, as laboratory and didactic work for children on the site and in classroom, dinner with figures in costume, archaeological hiking, theatrical performances and docudrama.
Usually people come to the site while we are working. To explain the poorly preserved mansio we stage different performances which involve the archaeologists themselves. For example, when we need to talk about the colonnade of the porch, each archaeologist mimes a column with its body standing in the exact position around the central courtyard. Moreover, especially when dealing with children, we perform the scene of the arrival of an horseman to the mansio in order to explain where the entrance was and how the spaces were organized.
Since 2014, our performances have been improved by the active help of the local associations. With their collaboration, we manage to organize more structured events, like “Una notte romana a Vignale”. In this occasion we opened the site in the evening, staging a theatrical performance in the mansio and setting up a refreshment point outside the fence.
What we propose is our idea of public archaeology: an archaeology that decodes the traces of the past; an archaeology that talks and deal with the community in which the site is situated; an archaeology that means social responsibility because translates the traces of the past in identity.
In this paper you find different examples of video storytelling made by archaeologists. Docudrama is the genre more experienced in the Roman site of Vignale: archaeologists perform as actors, reenacting in a likely way an ancient event in front of the camera. Recording a story, they tell what has happened during the fieldwork in a narrative way. Other examples of video storytelling are some dialogues through archaeologists and the stories of professional archaeologists. Sit down and see some archeovideos!
too. This paper wants to highlight an integrated approach between
fieldwork, its account and its dissemination to the public in different ways, including social media. This potential integration has come to life in the 2011 excavation of the Roman mansio of Vignale (Italy) and it has been named “Excava(c)tion”. It doesn’t mean a new way of digging but another way of approaching the excavation, an approach integrated toward and with the public, both on site and on the social Web.
“Excava(c)tion” conceives the site as a stage and digging as a performance, through a continuous dialogue between archaeologists and the public. Archaeologists share their work in the form of guided tours (live, theatrical-like performances), communicative diaries and
videos (edited, motion-picture performances) and on a blog (www.uominiecoseavignale.it). They receive back comments and oral accounts from the local community about the main themes of common interest.
“Excava(c)tion” means engagement both of archaeologists and the public in the pursuit of a global multivocality during archaeological excavation.
Since the situation is very complex and can not be solved with a yes-no question, what logic should we adopt for regulating their participation and addressing their impact? Trying to go one step further, this paper wants to question the volunteers’ participation and their impact from a value-oriented approach, considering their role in archaeological outreach. Data from quantitative and qualitative analysis – collected in some selected case-studies currently under investigation in my PhD research - will help to engage with three main considerations: the volunteers are not a single and monolithic body, they refer to different kinds of secondary stakeholders (or outsiders, those who have an interest in cultural heritage but little or no say in the decision-making process); they have different expectations and do not ask for the same level of participation; these levels are related to different sociocultural and economic values.
In public archaeology studies, the subdivisions show a well-defined division between more practice-oriented models (the educational and the public relations approaches) and more theory-oriented models (the pluralist and critical approaches). Moreover, archaeologists need to address the dichotomy between the financial viability and the ethical stance in contemporary archaeology.
This paper wants to think about these subdivisions from an Italian point of view. Italian public archaeology lives a period of innocence with a growing commitment to a more mature dialogue between archaeology and the public, a corresponding development of activities aiming to engage the audience but also with the lack in critical reflection and in method. This means that Italian public archaeology is not influenced by subdivisions outlined in literature and could have an alternative voice in this discussion.
The particular development of Italian public archaeology could give specific insights about some central questions: should the adoption of the critical approach be a premise for every archaeological research project? How the promise of a more ethical practice should influence our programme of work?
Saturano le nostre vite, plasmano le nostre convinzioni, i comportamenti, i principi etici. Agiscono sulla cultura e sulla storia, quella con la S maiuscola, facendoci riflettere sulla nostra identità e aiutandoci a capire chi siamo.
Ogni sito archeologico e ogni museo cela storie infinite, nascoste dentro ogni edificio e ogni oggetto, che aspettano solo di essere raccontate. Non è vero, però, che gli oggetti parlano da soli. È un mito da sfatare: gli oggetti raccontano qualcosa solo a chi ha già gli strumenti e le basi per conoscerli. E tutti gli altri?
Come facciamo a interessare, coinvolgere e far riflettere una persona su un fibula del 600 a.C., su un mosaico di un sito sperduto nella campagna emiliana, o su uno sconosciuto imperatore bizantino? Mettendo insieme gli elementi che abbiamo a disposizione - dall’archeologia alle fonti storiche e letterarie - e raccontando una storia. Ma non solo: ciò che a tutti noi interessa di più è, in realtà, entrare in contatto con le persone e le loro emozioni, con coloro che hanno plasmato e usato gli oggetti. Vorremmo addirittura dialogare con i nostri antenati proprio come facciamo con i contemporanei. È quel che cerchiamo sempre nella vita di tutti i giorni: interazione, comunicazione, dialogo. E solo attraverso le storie riusciamo a confrontarci faccia a faccia con chi ci ha preceduto: un confronto sicuramente virtuale e immaginario, ma non per questo meno reale nelle nostre menti.
Lo storytelling è in verità l’arte di parlare dell’uomo all’uomo, di creare contatti umani altrimenti impossibili. Si può fare in modi molto diversi, e in questo intervento porteremo alcuni esempi: dalle “storie da museo” create per gli oggetti del Museo Archeologico Nazionale delle Marche, ai video che narrano i risultati di scavo archeologico, al racconto di personaggi ed eventi del mondo greco-romano e bizantino. Temi diversi ma stessa metodologia, e stessa voglia di appassionare.
The case study I’m going to take into account is the Italian archaeological research project “Uomini e cose a Vignale”. Vignale is a Roman site in Tuscany (Italy) where since 2005, the University of Siena is carrying out an excavation of about 5 weeks per year. In the last years specific community archaeology dynamics developed between archaeologists and locals; these took the form of various cooperative experiences, either common (i.e. guided tours, exhibitions of the recent finds) either original (i.e. theatrical performances, videos where adults and children act together with archaeologists, participative museum).
The very reason lying at the roots of this will of participate is the creation of a perduring two way dialog between locals and archaeologists: undoubtedly this sort of relation could trigger advanced social innovation processes, but evaluation is needed to comprehend the expected values people assigned to their active participation in an archeological research. On the basis of the preliminary data on the results of outreach activities evaluation carried out in 2016 excavation season in Vignale, I aim to investigate which kind of social innovation can be fostered by an ongoing community excavation project and what the public does expect from this experience.
Questo è il compito che quotidianamente dobbiamo affrontare a Vignale. Un sito dove per necessità si è costretti a raccontare molto per colmare la mancanza di evidenze chiare e appariscenti. Lo scarso livello di conservazione rende ancora più complicato illustrare una struttura poco conosciuta come una mansio, già di per sé difficile da definire e ancor di più da immaginare.
Trovandosi il cantiere di scavo vicino ad una strada di grande comunicazione siamo stati fin da subito particolarmente esposti all’attenzione del pubblico. Questa contingenza ci ha richiesto di mettere in discussione la nostra strategia comunicativa e in generale il modo di porsi e presentarsi agli interlocutori. Una comunicazione più emotiva e narrata, spogliata da superflui e svianti tecnicismi, rende la divulgazione più chiara e diretta e la comprensione più efficace e funzionale.
Il nostro intervento si incentra sulla presentazione dei modi, dei sistemi e dei linguaggi con i quali affrontiamo e gestiamo la comunicazione della mansio a Vignale.
A seconda del pubblico che ci troviamo davanti infatti, proponiamo attività specifiche che vanno dai laboratori didattici agli incontri con le scuole, dalle cene in costume ai trekking archeologici, fino a suggestioni teatrali e ai docudrama.
Questo approccio partecipativo, “Excava[c]tion” (http://youtu.be/EGLMXjkZsfU), non si esaurisce alla sola narrazione della mansio ma viene declinato, in un’ottica di archeologia globale di un territorio, alle varie fasi di vita del sito.
Quello che proponiamo è la nostra idea di archeologia pubblica: un’archeologia che si pone come mediatrice nella decodifica dei segni del passato; un’archeologia che dialoga, comunica e si confronta con la comunità nella quale si inserisce; un’archeologia che si fa carico di una responsabilità sociale traducendo in identità le tracce che emergono dalla terra.
If you asked a friend of yours and his child what a mansio is, the best answer you could get would probably be “what?”. What’s actually a mansio? People generally know what thermae are, they can recognize a Roman road, the most capable ones even know what’s the difference between a Roman villa and those of today, but very few people know what a mansio is. If this cannot be considered a big flaw in terms of general culture, it can become a more serious matter if the excavation of a mansio is carried on right in the place where that friend and his child live: actually, primary responsibility of an archaeologist is to tell the public what he’s digging and he must strive to do it in the most engaging and stirring way as possible, using the most appropriate language.
This is the challenge we face daily in Vignale. A site where the lack of clear and visible evidences forces us to tell a lot. The poor state of preservation makes even more complicated to illustrate a very little known structure as a mansio is: a structure already difficult to define and even more to imagine.
The fieldwork is located in a position of high visibility near a highway. Since the beginning this situation leads a lot of people to the site and requested us to think about our communication strategy and the way of interacting with the public. We chose a more effective, direct and comprehensible communication using narration and emotion and avoiding unnecessary technical words.
Our paper focuses on this way of telling the site: what kind of activities, what languages we use to deal with and manage the communication.
Depending on the kind of public, we propose specific activities, as lab activities for children on the site and in classroom, dinner with figures in costume, archaeological hiking, theatrical performances and docudrama.
This participatory approach, called "Excava(c)tion", is not limited to the narration of the mansio but it is also used for the other phases of life of the site.
What we propose is our idea of public archaeology: an archaeology that decodes the traces of the past; an archaeology that talks and deal with the community in which the site is situated; an archaeology that means social responsibility because translates the traces of the past in identity.
L'Archeologo Cantastorie arriva al museo e si incontra con il Guerriero di Numana per definire gli ultimi dettagli per la serata.