La “pietrificazione” del costruito nell’Europa meridionale del pieno Medioevo. Considerazioni comparative dalla prospettiva archeologica

The essay contains some brief reflections on the contributions of the conference: The Petrified Landscape. The Social History of Europe between the Tenth and Thirteenth Centuries through the Archaeology of the Built Environment, published in this issue of the Journal, and organized as part of the project Petrifying Wealth. The Southern European Shift to Masonry as Collective Investment in Identity, c. 1050-1300 (ERC Advanced Grant 695515). Preliminary discussion concerned what is to be understood by the term “petrification”. The specific contribution of archaeology to this subject is then assessed. From the essays contained in this volume, a nuanced and complex picture of the times, modes and quantitative incidence of “petrification” has emerged. Finally, it is possible to note how identifying regional and temporal differences, and differences between the people commissioning the buildings, has allowed us to advance some hypotheses regarding what were the driving forces behind “petrification”, which would seem to be a complex interweaving of social, economic and cultural causes. In short, studying the investment in stone/brick and lime-mortar buildings from a comparative perspective, in terms of space and time, has made it possible to link this phenomenon not necessarily and not only to economic growth, but also to the evolution of powers, of the social structure as a whole and to the cultural prestige of durable buildings. It would seem that, in phases of economic growth and productive specialization, petrification is a decidedly consistent phenomenon in those realities where there are strong communities, autonomous but with internal fierce competition and social mobility. Equally fundamental, however, would seem to have been the cultural and symbolic prestige of “durable buildings”. In the Italy of the Communes, all of these ingredients seem to have been present, as is well demonstrated by the dozens of historical centres with high percentages of buildings still conserved today, built between the 11th and 14th centuries. In the same areas, the peasant world is much more complex, and petrification can be both a symptom of the strength of the rural community and, on the contrary, of increased subjugation. The Islamic world is obviously very variable, but it can be interesting in comparative terms: at different chronological and geographical heights it would not seem to give (even in phases of strong economic growth) necessarily a high social value, especially in private construction, to stone and lime buildings.Peer reviewe