ARCHEOLOGIA DI UNA CAVA NEL PAESAGGIO SALENTINO

ertain phenomena have transformed in recent decades the Salento landscape and compromised part of its permanence. The results of these transformations yield new images which, alongside the overlapping of traces and rewritings that characterise the palimpsest of this Mediterranean landscape, are large voids caused by broad clearings among the olive groves affected by xylella fastidiosa or by hollows generated by the removal of stone material, which constitutes the geological substratum on which this territory lays its foundations. The existence of new empty spaces, gaps they cannot fill simplistically, makes it necessary to rethink the new layout of the territory following these transformations without giving in to the instinctive tendency to fill up these voids with new full spaces but interpreting these landscape as human-made nature, which finds the reasons for its form in the continuous process of rewriting. The description of the geological forms, the stratigraphic and archaeological procedures for removing the most superficial layer of knowledge of the landscape and recovering the sense of its traces and fragments constitute possible tools for elaborating a new order, a new state in which the instances of construction of the contemporary Salento landscape emerge.