Archaeology and nature: hyblean cultural landscape and territorial ...

Fig. 6: Palazzo Pennisi.
meanings, can be properly maintained: "in a few words, the history that is deposited in them that, through the
memory of each of us can be passed on to others because they make appropriate use" [12].
Only by implementing forms of coordination referring to the complex system of natural, cultural and
landscape values of the individual local entities, based on a specific relationship with the existing institutional
protection instruments and in close connection with local people and research entities located in the area,
such as universities, these places will become very important resources for the territory and its community.
In this context, it may be useful to have recourse to the concept of eco-museum, actually a pretty well
established reality at international level but that only in recent years has come into common usage in the
Italian context [13]. On the basis of the eco-museum approach, the territory should not be considered as the
physical place where monumental isolated elements are located, but as a complex system of goods and
people that interact to compose the whole structure. The desire for innovation, born from the belief that
museums should not just collect, display and tell the story of objects in them stored but talking about people
and ideas, has contributed to the design of new organizational systems aiming at retracing and describing
the history of physical contexts, places and landscapes of the spirit, facts, atmospheres, works, legible forms,
all also signs of a past history. The eco-museum can be seen as the possibility that the museum's idea could
be extended over an entire area, involving in the process the population, finding a new sense to old
settlements, obsolete objects and methods, reusing them for new productive and cultural purposes: "It is, in
particular, for the local population that the eco-museum should be established. So that they would recover
lost traditions and, simultaneously, preserve cultural heritage - tangible and intangible - and the environment,
promote sustainable social, recreational, touristic development and through it, valorize resources and create
new or more skilled jobs [Boriani]. The success of these initiatives, however, highly depends not only on
economic factors, will and management abilities, but also on the quality of the restoration, reuse and
enhancement activities carried out on the goods involved in the projects or thereto related. To this end, it is
essential to focus on the issue of conservation of anthropological, natural, environmental, landscape,
historical and architectural characters in the area, starting from (finally!) implementing those basic processes
of direct knowledge (metric, material and environmental) directed not only to the buildings of major
importance but also to the so-called "minor" heritage often, still, incorrectly underestimated.
5. Conclusions
These are the principles that should motivate the material and spiritual rebirth of the Floristella Grottacalda
mining site and with it the whole territory. In an era dominated by changes brought on globalization
processes and on the increasing risk of homogenization, the only possibility of distinction and self-affirmation
of different places should be entrusted into the recovery of their identity. Only by the endogenous
strengthening of these characters it is possible to find the reasons of a desirable self-healing.
Since some time on, the presence of many urban and peri-urban "empties" characterizes most Sicilian big
cities. Areas mainly resulting from industrial decommissioning processes, remained largely ignored by the
urban development strategies that, at least until the mid-90s of the last century have preferred new forms of
expansion, mainly directed to the residential sector [14]. These pieces of land, made unproductive for purely
economic reasons and now emptied of meaning, can become, if properly rehabilitated, the ideal places
where osmotic processes between past and present, human activities and nature; between the man and the
city where he lives and in which he should be able to identify and find himself, would be reactivated. These
1100