Dall'Archeologia dell'architettura all'Archeologia della complessità

Within the Corpus of early medieval churches in Europe project, in the Alto Garda of Brescia a new study has been undertaken that, having listed, studied and excavated churches and hermit settlements over four years, has investigated the relationship between places of worship and building within the settlement. This work thus leans towards an Archaeology of complexities and relationships, evident in the physical links (road network), social and economic relationships, and the network of religious sites that, located throughout the landscape, help interconnect the system. For this study the chronological limits have not been predetermined but depend on the quality of the available sources and the time-span of single phenomena. It therefore represents a shift from an Archaeology of economies, which, within the confines of a reconstructed sequence, is limited to a classification of sites, buildings and landscapes on the basis of size and function, to an Archaeology of evolution. The latter aims to define the transformation of the socio-cultural environment, from the earliest recognisable institutions to the pre-industrial era, reconstructing the evolution over a long period of the identity of a landscape and the community that has inhabited it. In this projected research the Archaeology of Architecture has the theoretical and methodological means to identify places dedicated either to work, living or worship.