Approcci geo-storici e governo del territorio

Approcci geo-storiciElena Dai Prà (a cura di),
Milano, Franco Angeli, 2014
ISBN: 9788820419561

Indice

Indice
Claudio Cerreti, Presentazione, p. 9
Elena Dai Prà, Geografie “operative” e “visione” geo-storica, p. 15

Parte I – A monte e a valle. Scritture, rappresentazioni e simboli di paesaggi, dalle alte terre al piano

Paola Pressenda
Pratiche alpinistiche e rappresentazioni cartografiche: tradizione e innovazione nelle carte topografiche del Monte Bianco tra XVIII e XIX secolo, p. 19

If we consider the “path” from the discovery led to the pratice and to the description of the high mountains, in wich travellers and mountaineers have directly and indirectly contributed, the last step, through the literal description after, and the iconographic representation before, is the “map” that can offer a contribution to the knowledge of the mountain. The argument has been partly analyzed in its historical and cartographical part, until now, in particular in the ways that have been adopted in order to represent, by printing press or by handwriting, the high mountains system in the cartographical topography after the diffusion of mountaineering. But, the relationship between the mountaineering and the knowledge of the territory and its cartographic translation is ambivalent: from one hand mountaineers look for a cartographical support and on the other hand they makes themselves promoters of some initiative of survey. The case of Mount Bianco is the equivalent example and points out what is the contribute made by the practice of mountaineering to the knowledge of the territory. The direct observations of the higher tops of the West Alps – made by the mountaineers (not necessary from scientific criteria) – at the end of 18th century, during the crucial phase from the non-representation of Mount Bianco to the naming process from one side, and to the topographic representation on the other side have gradually contributed to fill up that area with geographical subjects: through what kind of ways and with what kind of results was the work upon the soil able to innovate the already existing models of the cartographic description? What are the connections and hiatus between the knowledge made by the direct observation and the pre-existing models of the cartographic description?

Ernst Steinicke, Rolond Löffler, Michael Beismann, Judith Walder
From out-migration to in-migratoin. Impact on autochthonous linguistic Minorities in the Italian Alp, p. 32

More than any other area in the Western Europe, the Alps, especially the Italian Alps, are home to great ethno-cultural diversity: there, no less than seven autochthonous linguistic minorities coexist side by side with the official majority. Our study show, however, that it I quite difficult to maintain such groups, since it is largely unknown where exactly the minority areas are situated. Therefore, an important object of this project is to present a cartographic representation of this ethnic diversity. Even tough with Law No. 482 a first important step was taken to preserve the linguistic minorities, their progressive decline by territorial and numerical criteria cannot be denied. Today, besides unfavorable bio-demographic factors, the causes are also current demographic processes. In this framework, the amenity migrants, those new immigrants who have discovered the mountains as a new, desirable settlement place, play decisive role by reinforcing the assimilation process.

Leonardo Rombai
Tra Appennino e Maremma beni comuni e usi civici nella Toscana lorenese, con le permanenze attuali, p. 46

Tuscany (especially the mountain of Appennines and the Maremma) continued to be characterized by the dense presence of the public properties (meaning state property) and the rights of public use on the grounds of private property. That was until the second half of the nineteenth century with the laisez-faire and bourgeois measures taken by Pietro Leopoldo brought to the drastic reorganization of the system, through the sale and «allivellazione» of the properties and the liberation of the serfs, even tough they will still exist in a minor form in the Appennines, in the Maremma and in the Amiata. The research intends to make the census of the areas concerned with the public properties and public serfdom in the second half of the nineteenth century or in the first decades of the twentieth century and checking the ones that are still present in order to value the accuracy of the procedure of identification made by Tuscany Region about the reality of civic uses.

Simonetta Conti
La montagna come confine: le secolari dispute tra Stato Pontificio e Regno di Napoli in alcuni documenti cartografici tra XV e XIX secolo, p. 60

The land frontier of the Kingdom of Naples according to Galiani: «borders for three quarters with sea-water and for one quarter with holy water». More than once during the centuries this frontier has been the reason of many disputes between the Pontifical State and the Kingdom of Naples. The first and more ancient cartography was made in the fifteenth century by Giovanni Gioviano Pontano, while the last maps connected to this topic date back to the first half of the nineteenth century. More precisely there is a reference to Carta della Frontiera del Regno (Kingdom Frontier Map) designed by Benedetto Marzolla in 1837 and to the Atlas in 40 maps published in Rome in 1841: Confinazione fra lo Stato Ponticio ed il Regno di Napoli concordato ed eseguito felicemente regnante Gregorio XVI P.O.M. e.M. Ferdinando II Re del Regno delle due Sicilie nell’anno MDCCCXLI. (Borders between the Pontifical State and the Kingdom of Naples have been agreed on and happily enforced Pope Gregory XVI and H.M. Ferdinand II King of the Kingdom of the two Sicilies in the year MDCCCXLI). Numerous documentations regarding this subject are kept at the State Archive of Naples (Foreign Office, Archive Bourbon and other funds and the Secret Vatican Archive). The current importance of this cartographical material is mainly in the big amount of toponymus, many of which are still present today in the State official cartography, but also for a precise interpretation of the territory. This interpretation is realized both from a physical point of view through the existence of orographic and hydrographic phenomena some no longer on the spot but also for the numerous varied infrastructure that were important to connect towns, agrarian universities and landed properties belonging both to people and public boards.

Vladimiro Valerio
La rappresentazione della montagna nel XIX secolo tra scienza e imitazione della natura, p. 75

From the second half of the 18th century the debate on the system of representation of the orography between geographers and topographers becomes tighter. Surveying instruments give rise to more accurate and more expeditious measurements, making possible the identification of the sea level and the determination of contour line. Furthermore, the large engineering projects need topographic maps through which not only planimetrical but also altimetrical operations can be carried out. Nevertheless, the slowness of the topographic operations and the difficulties to make a clear reading of the form of landscape through horizontal lines, understandable not only to technicians but to a wider public of users, suggested to adopt a different method of representation of mountain. Surveyors, and in particular military forces responsible of the topographic surveys, have to choose between a scientifically exact system – convenient for all the military and administrative purposes of the map. With this paper we intend to clarify the terms of the matter and analyze the main points of the debate as well as the solutions adopted by some topographic offices in the making of maps.

Donatella Carboni, Gian Valeriano Pintus
Le trasformazioni culturali, sociali ed economiche della montagna corsa attraverso lo studio della micro-regione del Niolu, p. 93

The small district of Niolu has been chosen as the subject of the present study because it is peculiarly representative of the traditional mountain context of Corsica and of the cultural, social and economic transformations there occurred during the second half of the XX century. The combination of historical, physical, cultural, social and economic factors has contributed to the preservation of Corsica’s archaic society, whose economy is based primarily on land and sheep farming. Its five boroughs – Albertacce, Calacuccia, Casamaccioli, Corscia and Lozzi – are located around the artificial lake of Calacuccia, with an average population of 1,000 people during the winter season. Since 1972, the establishment of the Parc Naturel Régional de Corse, to wich the Niolu district belongs, has contributed to the socio-economic change of the area. The present research aims to study this mountain area; one of the remarkable cultural and environmental potential, which has managed to promote its territory and propose a viable model for similar mountain contexts.

Stefania Cerutti
Il ruolo dell’albergo diffuso nello sviluppo turistico dei territori montani: l’esperienza italiana tra tradizione e innovazione, p. 108

It’s a house and an hotel at the same time, for travelers who don’t like to stay in a hotel; It’s a new form of hospitality called “Albergo Diffuso”. The main services are distributed in different buildings within the same village, according to an horizontal structure. This hospitality model has worked successfully in towns and villages in rural and mountain areas. Thanks to this approach, it is possible to re-use and revitalize old and dismissed buildings and to contribute to the development of local communities within a given territory. This paper aims to describe the Italian model, by presenting two examples in the Italian Alps.

Parte II – Acque e forme del territorio. Paesaggi, politiche, proposte

Letizia Cavallo
Acque e bonifica moderna in Italia. Tra macchine idrauliche e ibridi territoriali, p. 123

Modern mechanic marsh reclamation during XIX and XX centuries concerned wide areas of Italy. The regions resulting from this process appear as a sort of “territorial machine”. The engine character goes over the pumping stations and protracts in the artificialisation of land and water arrangement (especially concerning the drainage and irrigation system). However, the reclaiming modern machine reveals hybridity features. The functioning of mechanic parts is made possible by a huge and very “traditional” human work, while the artificial mechanisms coexist with natural processes carried out in the same spaces. Modern land reclamation is, therefore, double-faced: it has an artificial and mechanical side, but also conserve a biologic, pedologic and ecologic one. Besides, the reclamation territorial machine is a paradox itself: maybe a machine space is designable and verifiable as far as its hydraulic working, but the political, symbolic and governance-related aspects, which are the basis of any territory, escape from any mechanistic planning.

Anna Guarducci
Acque termali di Toscana nella cartografia e iconografia storica, p. 136

The starting point of this works is the complete map of the thermal resource of the region, in which we found, among hundreds of hydro mineral source, as many as 78 structures characterized by the presence of manufactures (sometimes elementary ones, like a fountain or a bath), to testifly an hydrotherapic use of thermal waters, through a real organization that took care of the management of the sanitary establishment, in addition to a free and “spontaneous” fruition, today and in the past. The research is necessarily based on the integration of very wide set of sources and studies, mainly published, but also on the handwritten historical documentation of an administrative kind, together with cartographical and iconographical documentations were afterwards enlarged with cartographical and iconographical documentations especially unpublished. These documentation were afterwards enlarged with the introduction of other figurative sources (pictorial views, photographs, postal cards) and the study of place-names connected with waters, which were found during the survey of the land or identified during the printing production. What I want to do is a deepening work through a survey on the varied categories of the iconographical sources, of course privileging the cartography at the different scales, both the many source and thermal structures: but, above akk, I want to try an read the becoming transformation of a reality that characterises Tuscany since the ancient times until today.

Valeria Santini
Toponomastica applicata all’idrografia nelle mappe catastali dell’Isola d’Elba, p. 153

The geometric particle cadastre of Tuscany as it is kwown was completed for the mainland in the 30’s of the nineteenth Century. From the reveille of the studies of estimation the islands remained excluded, until later. Among these the island Elba whose cadaster was ordered on February 27th 1840 following the same general regulations applied for the mainland. The whole territory of the island was covered with 208 sheets in scale 1:2500, removed between 1840 and 1841, 10 maps in a bigger scale (1:1250 for build-up areas and forts) and four general maps (topographical maps and general frames) in scale 1:20,000 related to the 4 “comunità” in which the island was divided at the time. The toponomastic properties attested by the cadastral maps, transcribed from the original documents, resulted constituted of a total of 1838 toponymies, about a quarter of which referring to water streams or elements. With the presentation I intend to give a first analysis of this part of the toponomastic system of the cadastral maps in terms of frequency, distribution, peculiarity, through a synchronic comparison with the whole toponomastic corpus found on the cadastral maps – in particular focusing the attention on the presence of statements relatable for their own – and diachronically with the toponomastic corpus of the modern maps of the Geographic Military Board (25,000) and of the region of Tuscany (CTR 1:10.000).

Andrea Favretto
Alcune riflessioni sull’uso del telerilevamento nell’analisi diacronica del territorio: l’esempio del fiume Quieto (Mirna) nella penisola istriana, p. 164

In this paper some critical remarks on applying remote sensing method to a river study are proposed. These remarcks are partly affected by some consequences of the recent Landsat database liberalization, which can be queried and downloaded for free till December 2008. It is well know that the Landsat mission is collecting medium resolution remote sensed images for more than 38 years. In fact Landsat 1, former knows as EARTS – Earth Resources Technology Satellites, has been put into orbit on July, 23th 1972. So we take as an instance the Quieto river valley (Mirna) in the Istrian peninsula (Croatia), on which we performed a multitemporal analysis on the basis of five medium resolution satellite scene, taken in different years. We tried to highlight strengths and weakness of using remote sensing method in order to control the land, in particular reference to the result accuracy.

Sandra Leonardi
Il fiume Melfa nella Valle di Canneto: da sorgente prodigiosa a fonte energetica, p. 177

The Canneto valley, part of the more vaste Comino Valley, is wedged among the Mainarde’s peaks, which are the lowest reliefs of the mountain massif. This reliefs are today known as Meta’s Mounts and lay among Lazio, Abruzzo and Molise. The river Melfa, affluent of the river Liri, rises from this valley and with is waters pure and cold as snow served a good deal of villages of the lower part of the Ciociaria and then was used in the hydro electrical power station, realized in 1958, in an area called Olivella,, under the administration of the town of S. Elia Fiume Rapido. The importance of the water, a very widespread element in the territory, is showed by the local toponyms, which are at the same time linked to the folklore and to faith, the water supplying to the production of hydro electrical energy.

Matteo Proto
Idrovia Padana: l’utopia di una moderna rete di trasporti fluviali nell’Italia contemporanea, p. 191

Projects for the construction of a modern waterway system in northern Italy begins at the end of 19th century. During all the century the inland navigation slew down as a consequence of the great development of the railway system: the aim was to transform the river Po and all its streams in a modern waterway in order to connect the principal cities of Italy (Milano and Torino) with the Port of Venice and the Adriatic sea. The technical and cultural model was the river Reno in Germany and, all the project in practice in the country. During the main years (1900-1920), as agreed with the ministerial inquiries, many project have been taken in to consideration but never put into practice: the development of the navigation, strongly supported at a local level (provinces, municipality, chamber of commerce) was not perceived as national problem. Moreover, at the beginning of the 1920s, a conflict the local organizations burnt out, especially because of the line and of the properties of construction, without finding a solution. After the Second World War, the economic resumption appeared as a starting point for an active phase. They started not only canalization works in the river Po but also the realization of two canals: the canal Milan-Cremona-Po, in order to create a connection between Lombardia and the river, and the waterway Padova-Venice, considered as a complete artificial connection between the Adriatic sea and the industrial cities of the plain. All these plans were bounded to fail, in particular because of the priority accorded to the development of highways and transportation motor business. The result of all these politics is not only a great waste of money and damage made by infrastructures that have been never finished, but is Italian supremacy, in Europe, for its percentages of transport by the streets.

Emilia Sarno
Dal ponte alla diga del Liscione: attività umane e comunicazioni nel basso Biferno, p. 199

The principal river of Molise, the Biferno, cuts Molise into two areas. Consequently, in the past, it was necessary to build a great number of bridges. Bridges which were often destroyed by flooding, given the geological structure of the valleys composed mainly of sand and clay. At the same time the Biferno has been a sources of wealth and has powered numerous mills which were later transformed into hydroelectric factories. A nerve centre of the region for communication and human activity is Lower Molise, an area which developed between the bridge of Liscione, which was found between the middle and lower reaches of the river, and the coast, where, until the early nineteenth century, the small port of Biferno probably was active. Here we will look at the various problems linked to this area as they are related to the restructuring of the bridges, the use of water for mills and other uses, through the study of documents and maps of the XVIII, XIX and XX centuries. The study is completed by an analysis of the construction of the Liscione dam – where the historic bridge was found – and of the transformation that took place here.

Elisa Tizzoni
La Magra: quando il fiume scorre nella storia. Dalla cultura del fiume al turismo culturale fluviale, p. 215

The aim of this paper is to describe the main lines of a tourism project based on the Magra river cultural heritage. Providing precious resources for the valley inhabitants, the river gave a basic contribution to the development of a common identity of the so-called Val di Magra, an area lying between Liguria and Toscana. Firstly, we will provided a brief overview of the most important traces left by past civilizations, using quotations by ancient and modern authors. Then we will describe the features of cultural heritage of the Val di Magra, including both material structures (museums, historical buildings, castles etc.) and events (festivals, exhibitions etc.) and focusing on its strengths and weakness. Finally, we will submit some proposal about management tools and marketing actions in order to meet the needs of touristic demand while keeping the traditional balance of local society.

Anna Maria Pioletti
Memoria e trasformazione del paesaggio: alcune riflessioni sulla Valle d’Aosta, p. 228

The Alpine landscape of Valle d’Aosta is marked by natural elements, produced by the orogeny and transformed by the action of the atmospheric elements, as water, who models the valley sides but can also sweep away settlements, creating a new landscape. The force of water has sculpted in the past – in the last decade – the valley floor of Dora Baltea river, as demonstrates the violent flood of 2000, who has redrawed villages and erased partly or totally the tracks, the signs and the transformations occurred from Morgex up to Hône. The geographer’s duty is to read and interpret the signs and the transformations occurred in the landscape, also through historical cartography, and to rediscover that heritage of knowledge and material works who had marked the settlement of middle and low Valle d’Aosta. The reconstruction made after the 2000’s flood starts by the consciousness of the historical landscape, witness of the memory of human action during times.

Parte III – Parlare d’altrove. Il discorso geografico e il paesaggio degli altri.

Maria Mancini
Forme di integrazione territoriale tra le alte e le basse terre dell’Etiopia nord-orientale, p. 259

The territory, which correspond to the today’ s Ethiopia, is characterised by a patchwork of very different landscapes and peoples that have established a political and administrative unit only during the second period of the 19th century. In the north-eastern part of the area, the most evident element of diversity is given by an accidental and, in some ways, unique morphology, which put, in a relatively narrow space, a plateau of about 2500m, and sometimes of 3000m, together with the lowest lands which can deeply sink till -200m under the sea level. Obviously, this diversity is view as a basis of other deep diversities. Nevertheless, these places, occupied by so different population for their varied ethnical, cultural and religious aspects and even for their socio-economics organization, had always have, during their historical process, territorial and economic forms of integration, which allowed to create a net of contacts and exchanges. And, even if these relational systems have been constructed by elementary infrastructures, they have been surviving, in many cases, till nowadays.

Michele Castelnovi
Monti e fiumi della Cina secondo Martino Martini, p. 274

In his Atlas (1665), Martini shows China according to chinese treatises. He’s the first european cartographer publishing such information. Choosing the chinese point of view, he even follows the chinese Geomancy (Feng Shui) and the Five Elements Theory (Wu Xing). He refers the ranking of the mountains in the traditional list of the sacred places and the burial preferences; he speaks about ethnic minorances pushed away from the plains by the Han, and points out the terrace cultivations. He describes the rivers, the Grand Canal, the tradition about choosing where to found cities and the importance of cultivation (particularly of the rice). He gives the accurate coordinates of each place. In conclusion, Martini is the first studious describing China as China really is: not a nightmare neither a dream.

Annalisa D’Ascenzo
Gli europei e l’altrove orientale. Primi contatti e rappresentazioni del Paese del Sol levante nell’opera di un geografo e cartografo del tardo Cinquecento, p. 284

This study proposes a reflection on the first direct contact between Europe and the Far East, particularly Japan, in the second half of the sixteenth century, through the experience of Urbano Monte. Born in Milan in 1544, Monte was passionate about geography and voyages of discovery. In 1585, in his hometown, he participated in the historical and amazing first visit of Japanese ambassadors in Europe and in Italy. Four young Japanese nobles were accompanied by the Jesuit Diego the Mesquita and other friars of the order. Probably, Monte had the possibly to collect direct informations about the geography of Japan from the Jesuits. He gathered other informations from descriptive works and travel accounts that reported news about the mysterious country. Through those informations, and his classical culture, Monte realized in 1589 a first map of Japan (Descrittione e sito del Giappone) and then a second map of the country, inserted in to a large geographical treaty: the Universale. Descrittione e sito de tutta la Terra sin qui conosciuta (1590, more or less). This big work is made up of four volumes and, in the last version, accompanied by a big planisphere in the form of a open pomegranate. Monte’s works are confronted with descriptions and representations of Japan written and painted in the same years by renowned cartographers of the period.

Isabelle Dumont
Gli affichistes, pianificatori della montagna. Lettura geostorica delle rappresentazioni geografiche da fine XIX secolo a inizio XXI secolo

If we want to paraphrase a title of the philosopher John Langshaw Austin «How to do things with words» (first English version, 1962), we could say «How to build a mountain with an ad». The advertisement is what is represented in itself: mounts, small villages, people; but in the end it also becomes what the consignee of the ad, this is to say the outsider of the mountain, is expecting from the mountains themselves. Through the analysis of about 150 ads devoted to the mountains, we present a century of the evolution of relationship mountain-society, looking carefully at varied differences (genre differences, class differences, differences of economical and cultural stages). We also kept in mind the temporal factor: the date of the ad, which time it refers to and the date of its possible reutilization. Somehow the ad adopts one of the performance dimensions of the landscape and because of this it also takes part in the socio-spatial building of the mountain territory, stratified during the time, considered as a whole and in parts. Each ad is a view of the (mountain) territory and also a microterritory in itself to all intents and purposes: the micro-territory is a «whole» and a «part» at the same time.

Rosy Scarlata
Per una geografia dei flussi commerciali tra Siviglia e l’isola Hipaniola: l’analisi dell’almojarifazgo di Santo Domingo (1522-1548), p. 322

Despite the copious literature about this topic, Seville’s archives (in particular the Archivio General de Indias (AGI) which was the headquarter of the Spanish colonial trade administration) offer the possibility to follow the steps of the exploration and conquest of the New World, on the basis of sources that often hahave not been developed enough. This contribution wants to illustrate a possible reconstruction of commercial trades between Spain and the island of Hispaniola, just after the discovery of America during almost thirty years (from 1522 to 1548); the contribution is made on the basis of the analysis of the archives’ sources, which consist in the almoharifazgo of the Indies, a fare ad valorem which had to be given in the New World’s harbours. The almoharifazgo collected in the West Indies was among the first tributes certified and drawn in the New World, because just after the conquest expeditions, people began to send goods in order to render the life far from luxury and comforts of the European continent more bearable. The archive documentation studied in this research is not, however, the first drawing up of gathering of fiscal data made by Spanish officials of the monarchy, dislocated on the island of Hispaniola (the original account supports have been lost), but it is likely to be even more authentic, because it derives from control and revision procedures. Those procedures were ordered by sovereign Charles V, whit the intention to inspect the work of some officials in charge of the collection of costumes fares on the island of Hispaniola: the results were immediately sent to the mother land and it is for this reasons that they are kept integral at the Archivio General de Indias. They allow us to make precise calculations about incoming and outcoming flows whit reference to the colonial commercial activity. According to a geographical point of view, moreover, not only does the reconstruction of commercial flows appears in its fundamental value, but also the precise track ship landing which were then subjected to the fiscal control. This could help to fill a documental gap in the geography of exchanges: more in details, it seems as the literature on this topics induces us to believe that once the golden cycle of the island was over (already around 1520s) the attraction of major richness of the American continent dissuaded people from sailing over the Atlantic to reach Hispaniola in favour of more lively and populated regions of the continent. Actually, according to the fiscal source we analysed, the arrivals at Hispaniola was stable during the development of the colonization, because Hispaniola – and in particular the city of Santo Domingo – was not cut off from the commercial trades of that period; instead, as we can see, there was a continuous goods supply.

Margherita Ciervo
Comunità andine e organizzazione territoriale tradizionale: elementi di continuità e discontinuità, p. 338

The aim of this paper, based on a field research in Bolivia in 2004, is to analyse the continuity and discontinuity elements referring to the traditional culture of Ayllu, native communities (aymara and quechua) living in the Andes. Ayullu are charaterised by the following features: rural territory and economy; wide spatial distribution of settlements; common property and private use of the soil and other natural resources; social control and government of the resources on local scale; collective government of the economy and production. By direct observation we can see some discontinuity elements concerning houses, farming, breeding and top-down projects. These are products, usually, by outsider actors and they can affect the traditional territorial organisation and the social relationship, or be embedded in the communitarian practices, or be ignored.
Gabriela Osaci-Costache,
The study aims to analyze the dynamics of the Argeş river and its surrounding landscape in the GIS Open Source environment, based on the topographic maps created between 1790-1997. We made a diachronic cartographic study in order to emphasize the landscape dynamics, and the good superposing of maps has facilitated the comparisons. Historical maps reveal the relationship between the Argeş river and local communities, the most important of them being the township of Curtea de Argeş, the capital of Seneslau’s Principality (the 12th century). There have been found some changes of the plan shape of the riverbed, due to natural causes, but mainly to hydrotechnical arrangements (reservoirs) during the 1965-1972 years. Anthropogenic interference led to a strong diminishing of the forested area after 1900, causing a decreasing of the naturality index. Moreover, forests and pastures on the slopes and terraces around have been displaced by other different land uses.

Gabriela Osaci-Costache
Il fiume Argeş tra i monti Făgăraş e l’altopiano Getico (Romania). Analisi cartografica Diacronica in ambiente GIS open source, p. 357

The study aims to analyze the dynamics of the Argeş river and its surrounding landscape in the GIS Open Source environment, based on the topographic maps created between 1790-1997. We made a diachronic cartographic study in order to emphasize the landscape dynamics, and the good superposing of maps has facilitated the comparisons. Historical maps reveal the relationship between the Argeş river and local communities, the most important of them being the township of Curtea de Argeş, the capital of Seneslau’s Principality (the 12th century). There have been found some changes of the plan shape of the riverbed, due to natural causes, but mainly to hydrotechnical arrangements (reservoirs) during the 1965-1972 years. Anthropogenic interference led to a strong diminishing of the forested area after 1900, causing a decreasing of the naturality index. Moreover, forests and pastures on the slopes and terraces around have been displaced by other different land uses.

Laura Stangnini
Lusazia 2010: a vent’anni dalla Riunificazione un paesaggio cambia volto, p. 372

In Lusatia (eastern Germany) during the first decade of the 21th century the largest post mining landscape reclaiming site in Europe has been completed. The ultimate aim of this project has been to employ the “new landscape” element as an opportunity for developing the region. Within an analysis of the cultural and identitarian transformations of this area, the Author has investigated on the role of the inhabitants through some interviews to experts and citizens as well as semi-structured questionnaires in order to gather information on their behavior and perception of the transformation and actions on their territory and on the local identity.

Parte IV – Paesaggi e parole. Dentro la storia del discorso geografico.

Roberta Cevasco
Archeologia dei versanti montani: l’uso di fonti multiple nella ricerca geografica, p. 385

The term “slope archaeology” could be used to define a field in environmental archaeology survey. It has been employed in different projects in southern Europe mountains (the Pyrenees, the NW Apennines) with active collaboration between geographical and archaeological research. A case study from NW Apennines (High Trebbia Valley) is here summarized within a multiple source research focused on the regressive sequence of cultural landscapes in the slope from the present to the 12th century A.D. The studies slope shows a number of wetlands and sites of historic environmental interest that have been cored for pollen, microcharcoal, palynomorphs analysis in the historical ecology perspective. This kind of field evidence is contrasted with cartographic, documentary, oral and vernacular buildings historical evidence. Local historical variation in the ecology of environmental resources (heathlands, wet meadows, chestnut groves, wooded pastures) are related to variation in the local geographical type of thatched barns.

Laura Cassi
Fotografie e ritratti d’ambiente nei nomi di luogo, p. 400

The majority of the names of place, the linguists teach us and as many years ago Olinto Marinelli warned us, are the result of “mere observations”, common terms which have been given a value of toponym, after a process of antonomasia. However, names like Mount Open Book, the Deadman or “Serrapotamo” are something more than simple statements of specific features, as they shows a different relationship with the processes of mental representation of reality. These relationships are even more interesting if they are investigated in connection to “Heart’s wrinkles and flow” because the height of the mountains and waters are particular representative categories of environment and landscape, that have always been fundamental to orientation, localization and identification of geographical objects.

Federico Ferretti
Patrick Geddes e la sezione di valle: una geostoria ei bacini fluviali, p. 408

The Patrick Geddes’ (1854-1932) papers on the Valley Section are one of the first expressions of the idea of regional planning, on which Geddes’ influence is well recognized. Geographers like Gary Dumbar and Claude Raffestin stated that the Valley Section owes much to the concept of hydrographical basin as exposed in Histoire d’un Ruisseau, by the close Gedde’s friend Élisée Reclus (1830-1905). Reclus, like the leading figures of Carl Ritter and Alexander von Humboldt, was a great producer of transects and reliefs for the representation of the third dimension, which is recognized as rather difficult to represent by flat maps. Can we affirm that these geographers’ ideas are one of the starting points of the 20th century concept of planning? What are their implication for the disciplinary status of geography and geo-history? We try to answer analysing the Reclus and Gedde’s correspondences and paper dealing with these topics.

Amedeo Vitale
Là dove scende il cinema, p. 419

Rivers run, flow, carry, bring back, unify, divide. Rivers fascinate. Cinema runs and flows too, in the history of the world. Cinema itself is part of the history of the world. Cinema tells about others, tells about itself and it’s told. It watches it’s watched. It was made for this. Therefore I watched: fast and turbulent rivers that brought dangers and death, slow and safe rivers that wars and utopias, rivers that marked borders, that slowed down journeys, that accelerated journeys, that built and destroyed, that fed and starved, that dig leveled and determined the face of the world. Cinema watched those rivers and it made us watch them. We cannot forget it, we cannot forget them. We have to watch the Cinema and watch it again. We have to use it, teach it, study it, the Cinema. Sometimes we have to forget its stories and search and find the History inside it and read it. The geographic story inside it and read it. Because the Cinema fascinates, too.

Luisa Rossi
Verso le isoipse, p. 432

Since the last 20 years, following the analysis of Brian Harley, David Woodward, Christian Jacob etc., cartography has been the subject of theoretical reformulations, who brought in to question the objectivity, the scientific nature and the neutrality of the map, giving benefit to an increasing interest towards its rhetorical and political intentions. These important remarks have at least partially diverted attention from scientific and realistic study of the cartographic document (and even from its utility in the territorial and landscape planning and in the architectural renovation). Without turning back to old-positivism attitudes – and rather approving the criticism to post-modernism suggested by Maurizio Ferraris’ “realism modesto” (Manifesto del nuovo realism, 2012) -, the essay examines the map as a “fact” rather than a “speech”, while approaching one of the principal question that led terrestrial architecture’s representation in late 17th and early 18th century’s France. Especially, it aims to analyze the sources produced on three levels: theoretical (handbooks, treatises, models), practical (first “ground” experience), and institutional. The Parisian archives store a rich documentation, that allows to reconstruct the transition from a representation of the mountains submitted to pictorial symbolism, to the first experimentations of the contour lines. The essay is an introduction to the Napoleonic topographical brigade’s activity, who in 1809-1814 will work in the “measuring” of contour lines, without abandoning the artistic description.

Massimo Quaini
Un grande laboratorio geografico: la montagna alpina fra Sette e Ottocento. Il ruolo della topografia militare, p. 451

The essay wants to illustrate the figure of the engineer geographer, considered as a typical figure during the Enlightenment and having a great importance in the European geographical History (but a little appreciated under this perspective) for their great contribute to the knowledge of the mountain of the Alps, during the Napoleonic campaigns and thanks to all the numerous topographical operations made by the Italian departments and by the Reign of Italy during the Empire. These operations have had a deep and quite appreciated influence on the successive progressions of the Italian and European cartography and, of course, on the origin of the geographical science. In conclusion this essay offers a general view upon the present-day knowledge and upon the perspective addressed to all the Italian scholars, in particular to the geographers and the cartographical historians in the exploration of the Italian funds in the French military files, if during the lecture it could possible to have coordinate programs and initiatives of study with the French scholars.

Giorgio Mangani
Le Marche giardino. La testualizzazione del paesaggio e il suo impiego nell’istruzione delle coscienze, p. 467

The landscape may be considered also a system of significations related to the places. It has worked, better in the Marche region than in other places, as a way to impose specific behaviours and educations to the population, in many cases analphabetic, under the control of the upper classes. The text analyses all the different strategies used in in order to exploit the landscape in a two thousands year’s period, from the very hermetic movements which characterized the first years of Christianity. The hermits had the possibility to use the “forest” for their meditation, and many other symbolic significations related to the environment and its vegetation, helping them for mnemonic exercises, in the same way as books work in our age. During the 13th and 14th centuries the strained relationship between the hermitic movement and the urban drift has been solved by the mendicants (the Franciscans and the Dominicans) who replaced the forest with the new urban landscape and its representations, but with the same function that includes all the strategies enacted to control civic consciences. The same strategies of controlling intimate mediations, thinking and popular behaviour have been tested during the following centuries by pope Sisto V’s project of a “New Palestine”, the della Rovere Dukes of Urbino and the Arcadia Academy, founded in Rome in the end of Seventeenth century.

Silvia Siniscalchi
Monti e acque tra passato e presente: il linguaggio cartografico come “epifenomeno” delle concezioni e percezioni del territorio attraverso alcune carte d’archivio, p. 485

Mountains and water are fundamental elements for the maps in every time, despite the changes of the symbolic forms and of the design cartographic techniques. Different styles are not caused only by evolution of cartographic science, but also by improvement of the “vocabularies” and “grammars” (citing A. Vallega) of cartography. With them the Geography, through the world’s description and his interpretation, has contributed to build and communicate her several possible scenarios, expressing their different meaning form many point of view, from ideological to meta-geographic. The correlation between different wayes of expression and mapping techniques, with a corresponding view of territorial reality, shows the impressive and communicative power of the symbol and produces and reinforces in the viewer a certain perception of the value of a territory and of its constituent elements. In this regard, drawings of orography and hydrography in the maps are very important, because they are linked not only to the “way of life” of the territory but to the mythical and cultural heritage of its communities. Hence the idea of examining, in diachronic-comparative way, two maps of the past three centuries depicting important mountains and rivers of the province of Salerno. Their importance is even more evident considering the relationship between man and environment content and, conversely, the indifference towards the nature that we can find in the today’s logic of economic development, how we can see in all dramatic episodes of hydrogeological instability.

Giuseppe Scanu, Cinzia Podda
Gestione del territorio, cartografia storica, paesaggi del passato, p. 501

The work examines some of the aspects associated with the use of historical maps in the reconstruction of the landscapes and their evolution over time, focusing on particularly diffuse categories as the first editions of the topographic maps but also on those not generally characterized by a geometric basis. After reiterating the difficulty of representation of the landscape in the case of intangible elements and having mentioned procedures always followed by some Italian scholars, is discussed the interpretation of zenithal view, such as those proposed by Euclidean cartography, and those in pre-geodetic cartography, in particular with reference to the precision consented from these typologies in georeferencing of territorial information when their presence constitutes an element of invariance and therefore must put constraints.

Cary Hendrickson
Sustainability and Tourism Discourse: a Review of the UNESCO World Heritage Patrimony, p. 513

The protection of natural resources is one of the most important sustainability challenges we face. Mountain protected areas in particular both illustrate the complexity within the current approach to sustainable tourism development and present a challenge to the discourse of fortress conservation elsewhere in the world. In theory, sustainable tourism has the potential to generate economic growth through a non-consumptive use of natural resources and thereby reinforces incentives to protect the environment thus emerging as a way of operationalizing the concept of sustainable development. However, in most cases, the paradox of sustaining human welfare and economic growth while on the other hand dealing with their correlate environmental impacts has yet to be resolved. This research seeks to contribute to an understanding of the extent to which tourism in protected areas is addressing human-nature interactions by providing a review of protected areas under the patrimony of UNESCO: from the most remote of Chinese villages to the recently inscribed Dolomites of Italy, the list of over 900 UNESCO world Heritage Sites contains both success stories as well as cases riddled with unintended consequences of the mass tourism approach. The aim is twofold: to try and identify the political narratives embedded within the qualitative research on protected areas and to review the quantitative assessments on socio-economic and environmental impacts in the UNESCO World Heritage Properties, gathered through a literature review. By looking at the extent to which the opportunities of tourism are being reconciled with the threats inherent in the environmental burden of mass tourism, it is the aim that this work can provide a useful resource for both policy-makers and researchers working in the fields of sustainable tourism and environmental conservation.