The article aims to analyse the reception of classical antiquity and of the ancient religions in a comic by Luca Enoch: Gea. Originally published by Sergio Bonelli Editore in the late 1990s, Gea is an unicumfor the Bonellian standards starting from its editorial format and its narrative structure. But the real touch of originality can be identified in its main themes, which are unusual for a "popular comic" – sexuality, social problems, political matters, etc. – and in the way how the Author uses the classical heritage and the ancient religions in two different modes. The former is presented in a traditional and stereotypical way while the latter are strongly reinterpreted. So the purpose of this paper is to understand the reasons for this different use of the past.
This paper aims to analyse the presence of figures and themes coming from the Classical heritage in the Japanese manga production. This review focuses mainly on how the manga-artists use such characters in order to identify and depict otherness: the works that are taken under consideration are mainly comics dating to 1970s, in which it is possible to follow an evolution of this production. The Author tries also to present a social and political explication of this phenomenon, based upon a brief analysis of how these theme could be connected to the evolution of the cultural and military relationship between Japan and the West ypical way while the latter are strongly reinterpreted. So the purpose of this paper is to understand the reasons for this different use of the past.
The database Cretan Institutional Inscriptions was created as part of the PhD research project in Ancient Heritage Studies Kretikai Politeiai: Cretan Institutions from VII to I century BC, carried out at the University of Venice Ca' Foscari by Irene Vagionakis from 2016 to 2019, under the supervision of Claudia Antonetti and Gabriel Bodard. The research project aimed at collecting the epigraphic sources related to the institutional elements of the many political entities of Crete, with a view to highlighting the specificity of each context in the period between the rise of the poleis and the Roman conquest of the island. The main component of the database consists of the epigraphic collection of the 600 inscriptions constituting the core of the documentary base of the study, for each of which an XML edition compliant with the TEI EpiDoc international standard was created. Each EpiDoc edition includes a descriptive and a bibliographic lemma, the text of the inscription, a selective apparatus criticus and a commentary focused on the institutional data offered by the document. In addition to the epigraphic collection, the database includes a collection of the main related literary sources, a catalogue of the attested Cretan institutions (assemblies, boards, officials, associations, civic subdivisions, social statuses, age classes, months, festivities and other celebrations, institutional practices, institutional instruments, public spaces) and a catalogue of the political entities of Crete (poleis, koina, dependent communities, extra-urban sanctuaries, hegemonic alliances). Data and SW available at https://github.com/IreneVagionakis/CretanInscriptions
International audience ; This contribution presents the traces on the ground and the archive documentation of a bombardment that took place in Solunto the night of 12 December 1942. The starting point of this research was a photograph preserved in the archives of the Regional Archaeological Museum Antonio Salinas which documents the restoration of a Solunto cistern following the bombing of the Allies. The site, in fact, was hit by a bomb which caused damage to the large masonry cistern placed near the Casa delle Maschere, at the highest point of the site. Archive research has allowed us to reconstruct the dynamics of the facts and revealed the commitment of the Superintendents to the Antiquities of Western Sicily, Jole Bovio Marconi first, Vincenzo Tusa later, profuse after the war to restore the damaged assets. Solunto, along with other towns in western Sicily, was part of the strategic sites that had hosted Italo-German military garrisons. The danger of the bombing had led the then cultural heritage managers to proceed with the protection of a large number of movable and immovable assets by moving them to safe areas or by covering them with sandbags. This fact is documented in the precious archive photos kept at the ECPAD, the military documentation center in Paris. After a first exposition of the historical facts related to the bombings of Palermo and its district, we will analyze the phases of restoration and consolidation of the assets made by the will of the two superintendents who have distinguished themselves for their tireless activity of protection of the cultural heritage that were called to administer. Jole Bovio Marconi, in fact, immediately tried to get the funds from the Marshall Plan to repair the war damage to Solunto, but these arrived only in 1951. The obtaining of these funds, disbursed by the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno, was the basis of the activities of archaeological excavation of the 60s and 70s by a young Vincenzo Tusa, whose fruits we can now see walking through the ruins of Solunto. ; In ...
ITALIANO: L'archeologia classica ha le sue origini nell'antiquaria, come la storia dell'arte, con la quale si è a lungo identificata. Di quell'origine antiquaria l'archeologia ha conservato la tendenza sito-centrica, nonostante la disciplina abbia ormai assunto tra i suoi capisaldi metodologici gli approcci stratigrafico, tipologico, topografico e si avvalga di tecnologie avanzate ed 'iper-specialistiche' per la ricostruzione del contesto del sito, ossia il territorio. La scommessa principale per l'archeologia contemporanea consiste, dunque, nel imparare a guardare alle "persone oltre le cose", come sintetizzato nella celebre espressione di sir Mortimer Wheeler: "the archaeological excavator is not digging up things, he is digging up people". A questo si aggiunge l'interpretare le tracce delle persone passate per le persone di oggi, che a quelle 'cose' attribuiscono un senso e un valore diversi. Il contributo affronta questo aspetto con un focus sul sistema per la tutela dei beni culturali e paesaggistici in Italia, ove una visione politica più olistica del patrimonio ha portato alla riforma degli uffici ministeriali periferici e alla creazione di Soprintendenze unificate. Strutture in cui gli archeologi saranno chiamati a lavorare fianco a fianco con altre competenze specialistiche superando una concezione settoriale e disciplinare del patrimonio culturale e paesaggistico. / ENGLISH: Classical archaeology has its origins in the antiquaria, such as art history, which it has long been identified with. From this origins, archaeology has acquired a site-centric attitude toward the territory which still survives despite the discipline recognises the stratigraphic, topographic and typological analysis among its methodological cornerstones making use of advanced and 'hyper-specialized' technologies for the reconstruction of the site context, namely the territory. The main challenge for the contemporary archaeology is, therefore, in looking at 'people beyond things', as summarised in the famous words of Sir Mortimer Wheeler: "the archaeological excavator is not digging up things, he is digging up people". To which we should add the way the traces of past people are interpreted by today's people, who attribute those 'things' different meanings and values. The paper addresses this issue with a focus on the protection system for cultural heritage and landscape in Italy, where a new holistic political vision of heritage has led to the reform of the peripheral ministerial offices and to the creation of "Unified superintendences". Offices where the archaeologists will be asked to work closely with other specialists going beyond any restricted or discipline-based attitude toward cultural heritage and landscape management.
The thesis is made of two chapters. The first one exploits an historical natural experiment set during Italy's Fascism to assess cultural persistence vs. dynamics in a paradigmatically critical area, Southern Italy, whose current economic backwardness is often associated to a low social capital endowment, in turn commonly ascribed to cultural and institutional heritage. In the experiment, an exogenous shift of a border into a territory entirely internal to that heritage provides us with an highlighting instrument able to identify weight of history and variation in culture in the 20th century in this doubly depressed region. A discontinuity exercise at the new border shows that, starting from previous homogeneity, there is evidence of relatively recent adverse cultural dynamics in Southern Italian territories. A comparison with an analogous exercise on the old, upper border tends to rule out classical institutional or contagion channels as individual and administrative behaviours used to be not better (mostly, worse) northwards. Their deterioration below the new border emerged endogenously in the period following the creation of Regions, contradicting previous legacy and giving rise to a relative reversal of cultural fortunes. The second chapter provides new evidence on the effectiveness of hiring subsidies that target the long-term unemployed, analysing a generous policy that was in force until the end of 2014 in Italy. Unlike others of its kind, this policy was particularly ambitious as it encouraged only permanent employment, which at the time still benefited from strong employment protection legislation. To achieve identification, we use a triple difference estimator, where we exploit three sources of variation: (i) the subsidy was only for the long-term unemployed and not for the short-term unemployed; (ii) it was significantly more generous in the South; (iii) it was in place until 2014. We find that the relative probability of eligible individuals in the southern regions of finding a permanent job dropped after the program terminated. This effect does not seem to be driven by substitutions over time, across contracts or among jobseekers. A cost-benefit analysis shows that the policy was globally in surplus.
International audience ; This contribution presents the traces on the ground and the archive documentation of a bombardment that took place in Solunto the night of 12 December 1942. The starting point of this research was a photograph preserved in the archives of the Regional Archaeological Museum Antonio Salinas which documents the restoration of a Solunto cistern following the bombing of the Allies. The site, in fact, was hit by a bomb which caused damage to the large masonry cistern placed near the Casa delle Maschere, at the highest point of the site. Archive research has allowed us to reconstruct the dynamics of the facts and revealed the commitment of the Superintendents to the Antiquities of Western Sicily, Jole Bovio Marconi first, Vincenzo Tusa later, profuse after the war to restore the damaged assets. Solunto, along with other towns in western Sicily, was part of the strategic sites that had hosted Italo-German military garrisons. The danger of the bombing had led the then cultural heritage managers to proceed with the protection of a large number of movable and immovable assets by moving them to safe areas or by covering them with sandbags. This fact is documented in the precious archive photos kept at the ECPAD, the military documentation center in Paris. After a first exposition of the historical facts related to the bombings of Palermo and its district, we will analyze the phases of restoration and consolidation of the assets made by the will of the two superintendents who have distinguished themselves for their tireless activity of protection of the cultural heritage that were called to administer. Jole Bovio Marconi, in fact, immediately tried to get the funds from the Marshall Plan to repair the war damage to Solunto, but these arrived only in 1951. The obtaining of these funds, disbursed by the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno, was the basis of the activities of archaeological excavation of the 60s and 70s by a young Vincenzo Tusa, whose fruits we can now see walking through the ruins of Solunto. ; In questo contributo si presentano le tracce sul terreno e la documentazione di archivio di un bombardamento avvenuto a Solunto la notte del 12 dicembre 1942. Il punto di partenza di tale ricerca è stata una fotografia conservata negli archivi del Museo Archeologico Regionale Antonio Salinas che documenta l'avvenuto restauro di una cisterna di Solunto, in seguito ai bombardamenti degli alleati. Il sito, infatti, fu colpito da una bomba che provocò il danneggiamento della grande cisterna in muratura posta in prossimità della Casa delle Maschere, nel punto più alto del sito. Le ricerche d'archivio hanno permesso di ricostruire la dinamica dei fatti e hanno rivelato l'impegno dei Soprintendenti alle Antichità della Sicilia Occidentale, Jole Bovio Marconi prima, Vincenzo Tusa dopo, profuso dopo la guerra per restaurare i beni danneggiati. Solunto, assieme ad altre località della Sicilia Occidentale, faceva parte dei siti strategici che avevano ospitato presidi militari Italo-Tedeschi. Il pericolo dei bombardamenti aveva portato gli allora responsabili del patrimonio culturale a procedere con la protezione di un gran numero di beni mobili e immobili tramite il loro spostamento in zone sicure o tramite la copertura con sacchi di sabbia. Questo fatto è documentato nelle preziose foto d'archivio conservate presso l'ECPAD, il centro di documentazione militare di Parigi. Dopo una prima esposizione dei fatti storici relativi ai bombardamenti di Palermo e del suo comprensorio, si analizzeranno le fasi di restauro e consolidamento dei beni operata per volere dei due soprintendenti che si sono distinti per la loro instancabile attività di tutela del patrimonio culturale che erano chiamati ad amministrare. Jole Bovio Marconi, infatti, tentò subito di ottenere i fondi del Piano Marshall per riparare i danni bellici a Solunto, ma questi arrivarono solamente nel 1951. L'ottenimento di tali fondi, erogati dalla Cassa per il Mezzogiorno, fu alla base delle attività di scavo archeologico degli anni '60 e '70 da parte di un giovane Vincenzo Tusa, di cui possiamo oggi vedere i frutti passeggiando fra le rovine di Solunto.
L'articolo rilegge i tentativi di nazionalizzazione del Regno delle Due Sicilie mediante lo studio delle opere sull'Italia preromana a Napoli come in Sicilia. Nella parte continentale del regno l'insistenza sulla specifica origine greca delle popolazioni meridionali venne utile per legittimare nei termini di una specifica nazionalità il nuovo ordine statuale. Quella proposta venne tuttavia presto avversata da alcuni autori siciliani, per i quali la scelta di uniformare sotto il segno della Grecia classica il tratto storico-antropologico di tutto il Mezzogiorno subordinava l'isola a Napoli: da qui la riscoperta delle antiche popolazioni indigene, siculi e sicani, considerati al pari se non più dei greci, antesignani delle popolazioni isolane. Nello scontro si sarebbe inserito il dibattito circa le libertà italiche conculcate dall'espansionismo romano, reso celebre in tutta Italia dalle opere di Cuoco e Micali: il riferimento a un lontano passato di libertà sulle prime venne utile alla Sicilia soltanto per rifiutare la supremazia di Napoli, ma dopo il 1860 consentì, di qua come di là dal Faro, di compiere una scelta comunque condizionata in favore dell'Unità. ; The essay is focused on the nationalization of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies through the study of the historical works devoted to the pre-roman Italy in Naples and in Sicily. In the continental part of the Kingdom, many scholars exalted the specific Greek origins of the southItaly people with the aim to legitimate the new social and political situation, under the terms of a specific nationality. However this proposal was soon rejected by some Sicilian authors, because the choice of aligning the whole southern features under the heritage of the Classical Greece subordinated the island to Naples: for this reasons many Sicilian scholars identified in the ancient local people, Sicles and Siacanians, the authentic forefathers of the island. In that duel had a main role the debate about the Roman Empire, guilty of being the destroyer of the italic liberties, made well-known by Cuoco and Micali: the reference to a far past of freedom was at first useful to Sicily only to reject the supremacy of Naples, but after 1860 it allowed to make a choice conditioned in favor of the Unity.
The opportunity for this work originates from the recent discovery of two codices on wheels for perpetual motion in Tehrān and in Manchester by G. Ferriello, whose paper will follow in this issue. Now the similarity of the drawings existing in these manuscripts with known ones on the same topic by Leonardo and by other Renaissance engineers requires some reflections on possible relationships and on the transmission of knowledge between East and West in the field of Mathematics and Engineering in the Early Modern age. The substantial studies on Renaissance engineers do not refer anything to researches on technical-scientific development in the Islamic world, nor particularly in the Persian world, which we will deal with. This certainly did not happen for lack of documentary material, but of interest of scholars to sources in not European languages, with the consequent lack of comparisons between historical-cultural contexts that have shared a lot in the past, inheriting and transmitting Classical and Hellenistic texts that were acquired, translated, integrated and then returned to their original sphere. The studies on the Renaissance, favoured by the interest in machines intended in a philosophical - as well as technological - key and extended to the experimentation of machines in building sites, have made known a vast documentary heritage, consisting of writings and drawings; these works have also promoted the interest in Mechanics applied to the building subject and for its protagonists, from Taccola to Francesco di Giorgio to Leonardo; but not always adequate emphasis has been given to the means of transmission of the sources, that have been somehow forgotten after the translation of ancient texts into Latin or vernacular, or even denied for religious or political reasons in Catholic Europe: thus has been lost, in many cases, the added value represented by the passages through the scientific culture of the Near East. ; Questo lavoro nasce dalla recente scoperta di due codici sul moto perpetuo rivenuti a Teheran e a Manchester da parte di Giuseppina Ferriello, la cui relazione seguirà in questo numero. La somiglianza dei disegni esistenti in questi manoscritti con quelli noti sullo stesso argomento di Leonardo e di altri ingegneri rinascimentali richiede alcune riflessioni sui possibili rapporti e sulla trasmissione delle conoscenze tra Oriente e Occidente nel campo della matematica e dell'ingegneria in età moderna. I corposi studi sugli ingegneri rinascimentali non fanno alcun riferimento a ricerche sullo sviluppo tecnico-scientifico nel mondo islamico, né particolarmente nel mondo persiano, di cui ci occuperemo. Ciò non avvenne certo per mancanza di materiale documentario, ma per il mancato interesse degli studiosi verso fonti in lingue non europee, con la conseguente mancanza di confronti tra contesti storico-culturali che molto hanno condiviso in passato, ereditando e trasmettendo testi classici ed ellenistici che sono stati acquisiti, tradotti, integrati e poi riportati nella loro sfera originaria. Gli studi sul Rinascimento, favoriti dall'interesse per le macchine intese in chiave filosofica – oltre che tecnologica – ed estesi alla sperimentazione delle macchine nei cantieri, hanno reso noto un vasto patrimonio documentario, costituito da scritti e disegni; questi lavori hanno promosso anche l'interesse per la meccanica applicata all'edilizia e per i suoi protagonisti, da Taccola a Francesco di Giorgio a Leonardo. Non sempre è stata data adeguata enfasi alle modalità di trasmissione delle fonti, che sono state in qualche modo dimenticate dopo la traduzione di testi antichi in latino o volgare, o addirittura smentite per ragioni religiose o politiche; così, in molti casi, è andato perduto il valore aggiunto rappresentato dai passaggi attraverso la cultura scientifica del vicino Oriente.
