Pratiche tradizionali ed elementi caratteristici nel paesaggio rurale storico
Author(s)
Santoro, Antonio
Date Issued
May 28, 2013
Type
Doctoral Thesis
Abstract
The importance of cultural landscapes as part of the cultural heritage of a country has in recent years
led to the development of policies and actions for their protection and valorisation, following the
European Landscape Convention, which invites each country to “identify its own landscapes
throughout its territory” and “to analyse their characteristics and the forces and pressures transforming
them” and “to take note of changes”. The need to identify the characteristic features and the traditional
practices is mainly due to two Ministerial Decrees. The first one is the Cross Compliance Decree,
where the “maintenance of the characteristic elements of the landscape” is mandatory for the
preservation of the Good Agricultural and Environmental Conditions (GAEC). The second one is the
Decree on the National Observatory of Rural Landscape, approved at the end of 2012, which establish
the “National Register of Rural Landscapes of Historical Interest, Agricultural Practices and
Traditional Knowledge”, which has the purpose of “identify and catalogue in the Register traditional
rural landscapes or landscapes of historical interest present within the national territory and connected
traditional practices and knowledge”.
From these initiatives come the problem of identifying and classifying the characteristic features of
the rural landscape, especially with regard to their typological classification that allows to identify the
“characters of the typical” in a particular landscape. This study intends to identify those that can be
considered as the characteristic features and the traditional practices of the historical landscape,
defining the variety present at national level and completing a typological classification, using as a
basis the study areas of the National Catalogue of Historical Rural Landscapes, a study promoted by
the Ministry for Agriculture, Food and Forestry, coordinated by Prof. Mauro Agnoletti, in which are
collected the most significant cultural landscapes in Italy.
This research led to the identification of about 105 characteristic elements and traditional practices,
divided into 14 classes. For each element was made a fact sheet with a standard structure,
accompanied by photos and various information so as to carry out a classification of these elements, in
order to identify and characterize some typologies, based on typicalness, even at the local level.
In addition, in five study areas were carried multi-temporal analyses, to observe the changes in the
landscape over the last 50 years and to test this type of analysis for the study and identification of
characteristic landscape elements. This kind of analysis can also provide the base for the creation of a
monitoring system of the rural landscape on a national scale. These analyses have allowed a more
detailed study of the characteristic elements, through the creation of thematic maps, and have
confirmed that this type of analysis is an ideal instrument to investigate in detail the structure of a
landscape and to follow the changes in time.
The study has shown that the Italian rural landscape is still very diverse, with many different types of
characteristic elements and of traditional practices, that still survive and which often represent the
identity of a territory. The characteristic elements and the traditional practices identified in this study,
represent a first step to deepen our knowledge of the historical landscapes and of traditional
agricultural practices.
Due to the wide diversity of cultural landscapes in Italy, in fact, to apply concrete actions for the
valorisation and safeguarding of historical landscapes, a complete description must be provided, with
a good typological classification in order to follow the initiatives at the national level, but with
attention to the local diversity. As a matter of fact, it is not possible to apply measures universally
suitable for all the Italian landscapes, without calibrating the individual actions to the different, socioeconomic,
environmental, historical and cultural situations that can be found at the local level.
Additional information
Dottorato di ricerca in Scienze e tecnologie per la gestione forestale e ambientale
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