Viscomi, Joseph (2024) Depopulating landscapes: methodology and the materiality of archives in Calabria. In: Buono, A. and Miniaci, G. and Anguissola, A. (eds.) Forsaken Relics : Practices and Rituals of Appropriating Abandoned Artifacts from Antiquity to Modern Times. Oxford, UK: Oxbow Books. ISBN 9798888571149. (In Press)
Abstract
This chapter explores the question of archives destroyed by neglect, decay, and natural events. It argues that these archives pose specific problems to apprehending the pasts, presents, and futures of depopulation, especially in the context of anthropogenic climate change. Earthquakes, floods, landslides, and fires have rendered visible political and cultural processes, but their effects are often obscured by the destruction of archives. This paper, therefore, aims to interrogate how material processes influence and shape history. My concern with ‘materiality’ is rooted in the potential of neglected archives and physical landscapes to provide different levels of historical data. On one hand they serve as situated repositories of information about the past; on the other hand, they bear witness to the process of emptying as materials of that same past. People’s relationship with these archives, then, is often in dialogue with their relationship to the very landscapes they inhabit. While many archives have been neglected or destroyed, this abandonment was at times a choice, a decision to disregard norms of an increasingly bureaucratic state and to inhabit a place, even as it emptied. By interrogating these problems, Depopulating Landscapes enhances the analytic tools we have to comprehend how people and land have been mutually constituted through history, and how scholars can access, assess, and study these stories.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Book Section |
|---|---|
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Historical Studies |
| Depositing User: | Joseph Viscomi |
| Date Deposited: | 18 Jun 2024 12:36 |
| Last Modified: | 18 Jun 2024 12:36 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/53584 |
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