Mobility and the Landscape: The Roca Archaeological Survey Second Interim Report

Within archaeology, mobility of different sorts has been regularly studied through data coming primarily from excavation contexts through the use of proxies like material culture, bio archaeological remains. The aim of this paper is to present a different perspective on the study of mobility, using as a starting point data coming from the landscape. The approach pursued here is one that seeks to address mobility in the landscape through the globality of the human past, from prehistory occupation up until a few decades ago. The concrete case study on which this perspective will be applied is the landscape around the important Mediterranean hub of Rocavecchia in Southeastern Italy, one of the most important interaction hub in the central Mediterranean from later prehistory, when it was at the core of connections with Aegean palaces, through ancient times when it was the locus of an important cave-sanctuary, to the mediaeval times, until the recent migration phenomena of the 1990s in the aftermath of the cold war and finally to the inception of mass tourism and large-scale industrial development. Acknowledgments The generous support obtained by the Italian Ministry of University (MIUR), the Department of History and Cultures (University of Bologna) as well as the Comune of Melendugno has allowed us to conduct the research beyond this paper. The authors remain the only responsible for any error and/or inaccuracy present in the paper. The permit to conduct the research has been granted by the Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio of the provinces of Lecce and Taranto.