From Torcello to Venice: Anthro-Ecological Approaches to Narrating the Origins of the Serenissima

Abstract

This paper aims to describe the material consciousness of Venice’s origins, through time, considering both archaeological artefact sequences and historical reconstructions. It reflects on new possible approaches to material interrogation based on anthro-ecological perspectives.

Beyond materiality, anthropological approaches have a very significant role to play in a setting like Torcello and Venice, where the much of the modern population literally live by selling the uniqueness and beauty of this historic city. The past, material and intangible, has become the core business of local inhabitants.

The disparity between the history of the “origins”, traced by the archaeologists during the last decades, and public knowledge, is surprisingly evident. 50 years of modern archaeological and archival research produced in Torcello island a huge set of data and interpretations, nevertheless hundreds of thousands of visitors every year have been told by local guides that Torcello started when barbarians destroyed the nearby Roman city, exactly how it was said in the early 19^th century. 

Summarizing Venice’s archaeology and history has a specific political connotation: UNESCO have played a critical role in furnishing the modern conceptualisation of local history. How does the present memory of local Venetians interact with the static view of classical archaeological and historical reports?