Sustainable Futures in Southern Calabria: Vibrant Communities, Farming Heritage, and Loving the Rural Life

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Making Historical Archaeology Matter: Rethinking an Engaged Archaeology of Nineteenth- to Twenty-First-Century Rural Communities of Western Ireland and Southern Italy" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Small rural towns throughout Italy struggle with declining populations, and many sell houses for extraordinarily little money to lure people to become residents and invest in these communities. The Bova Marina Archaeological Project knows that paying people to move to a hilltop town will not be sufficient to revitalize a community. In our architectural survey of the San Pasquale Valley, a rural community near the town of Bova Marina, we learned that residency provides only one element of a sustainable future. Building sustainable communities requires four key components: (1) making a reliable living to support families; (2) maintaining residency to support a vibrant community; (3) supporting policies and policy makers to provide residents with material and labor resources to protect and manage their local built and natural environments; and (4) some people of the younger generations embracing rural life and seeing a future for themselves in these areas. Our project seeks to contribute towards revitalization efforts in rural Bovese communities by offering our expertise to create heritage tools and nuanced knowledge bases that can empower local residents in their efforts to build a future for themselves and future generations.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Making Historical Archaeology Matter: Rethinking an Engaged Archaeology of Nineteenth- to Twenty-First-Century Rural Communities of Western Ireland and Southern Italy   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38801.0