DESIGN AND ACTIVE CONSERVATION OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL LANDSCAPES. New windows of research for an interdisciplinary reading.

The essay presents the result of a research carried out by the authors (a landscape architect and a restoration architect) on topics of archaeological landscapes and about methods and criteria for management and uses of such contexts. The positive experience carried out by P. Porcinai, F. Minissi and V.Tusa in the Selinunte archaeological park (1972-1981), opens the essay in which we aim to deal with the topic of integrated relationships between the active conservation of archaeological site/park and the landscape project, considering the landscape as a dynamic system of relationships and processes, in its different biotic and abiotic components. Particular attention we paid to the theme of the vegetation framework and to the management of potential interactions with archaeological structures (compatibility and choice of species, protection, conflicts and dangers, “integration of images”, communication and didactic support, environmental improvement, ecological connections and biodiversity increase). The necessity to find an integrate attitude, suitable to operate on different spatial and temporal levels, suggests new methods of diagnostic/interpretative reading and new modalities of conservation on archaeological sites, including the site within a wider context of landscape and environmental relationships, and permitting the elaboration of strategies and processes defined by seasonal or annual programming of maintenance work, in order to abandon the “emergency” practises widely diffused.