Archaeology to help the disabled: in Fasano, Apulia, the experiment

A beautiful story coming from the province, witharchaeology used as a tool to help those with mental and cognitive disabilities. It is the one that comes from Fasano, Puglia, where just a few kilometers from the trulli of Alberobello and the white city of Ostuni, on the road linking Bari and Brindisi, is preserved the most extensive example of a Roman and late antique city in Puglia: the Egnazia Archaeological Park and “Giuseppe Andreassi” National Museum. The initiative, as reported by local news site GoFasano, is by the “Anila” Day Care Center, which for the past year has started the project of inclusion, rehabilitation and emancipation of people taken in charge by visiting the excavations. The approach is to offer innovative and personalized rehabilitative activities by offering constant stimulation in the psychosocial field, in this area, the possibility of entering an Archaeological Park undoubtedly confronts them with opportunities for new stimuli, curiosity and interest.

The guided tour of the Egnatia Archaeological Park with managers of the sociosaniatary facility and the Park gave satisfaction to the operators by seeing the group’s interest in observing the artifacts, listening to explanations and tactually interacting with the exhibits in the museum, thanks to interactive tools. “The enthusiasm generated by this visit,” they explain, "led to the children’s participation in the search for artifacts at the archaeological site in collaboration with professional archaeologists and other students.The children had the opportunity to carefully examine the terrain and were gratified by the discovery of artifacts that they were able to catalog with their names. This helped develop their cognitive and interpersonal skills, making them true multipliers of the area’s potential.

Already the relevant scientific literature points out that “interventions aimed at enabling even those with disabilities to enjoy a work of art, perhaps by entering an archaeological site through an accessible route, do not depend”, Angelo Lascioli and Dario Scarpati state in a 2015 study, “exclusively on technical solutions, but are the expression of a new culture of disability, the effect of a reversal of perspective, which consists in overcoming the ’logic of discard’ in favor of building an inclusive society. Art and beauty must therefore be accessible to every person, despite his or her deficits, and from the encounter between art and disability new prospects for development can arise both for art itself and for those who live in conditions of disadvantage. In archaeology workshops aimed at people with disabilities, educational paths with rehabilitative values are developed, particularly to increase the development of cognitive skills, self-esteem, motivation and social skills. Innovative methods for learning to reason, observe, make assumptions and find intelligent solutions are experimented in these work spaces. Those who participate discover new things about the world and themselves. Archaeology thus reveals a distinct maieutic capacity and a great extension of possibilities, which can be used to improve the quality of life of people with disabilities.”

The archaeological site is located near Fasano and bears witness to the history of Egnatia, an active trading center of the ancient world, whose first settlement dates back to the 15th century B.C. (Bronze Age) This is not the first time that it has lent itself to be a ground for educational services for the disabled with specific guided tours.

Inhabited by the Messapians from the 8th century B.C., the ancient city of Egnatia became part of first the Republic and then the Roman Empire until its decline in the Middle Ages. It was not until 1912 that systematic excavation campaigns were undertaken, which, with various solutions of continuity, continue to this day. Currently, the area with its 15 hectares of archaeological park and 1,200 square meters of museum exhibition space is not simply an area of excavations and archaeological remains, but is now an entire ancient city in the open.

And it is in the acropolis area that the oldest traces of human presence in Egnatia have been found, dating back to the Middle Bronze Age. Evidence of the continuity of life in later ages are the cult buildings, including the imposing Trajan sanctuary dedicated to Venus built in the Roman period (2nd century AD). The remains of the Via Traiana, built between 108 and 110 A.D. by Emperor Trajan as a variant of the Via Appia to connect Benevento (Beneventum) to Brindisi (Brundisium), form an ideal division between the public buildings and the residential and artisan quarters of the Roman city. The Messapian tombs discovered in the necropolis often feature pictorial decorations that provide valuable information related to the culture and beliefs about the afterlife prevalent between the 4th and 2nd centuries BCE. In addition to the frescoes, the high standard of living is evident from the presence of numerous chamber tombs - large underground rooms dug entirely into the rock - and half-chamber tombs, which are smaller in size. The creation of monumental family tombs testifies to the presence of an emerging aristocratic class.

Among the chamber tombs, great interest was aroused by the discovery of the Tomb of the Pomegranates in 1971 during construction work on the foundations of the Museum. A staircase with steps carved into the rock and a vestibule lead to the hypogean burial chamber: the extraordinary entrance door, which is still fully functional today, consists of two monolithic doors with a recessed handle. The name of the tomb derives from the presence of pomegranates, a symbol of the afterlife, frescoed in the upper part of the tomb walls. Lower down are plant motifs with ivy branches interspersed with palmettes. The ceiling decoration reproduces the typical architecture of Roman dwellings: the red bands, for example, simulate a double-pitched roof with wooden beams.

Of particular interest in the museum are the specimens of trozzella, a typical vase of the Messapian culture characterized by plastic wheels-called “trozze”-applied to the handles. Next to the valuable Apulian red-figure ceramics, there are numerous “Gnathia-style” vases, black-painted with overlapping decoration in white and yellow, widespread throughout Apulia. The amphorae, as well as the great variety of artifacts of Italic, African and Oriental provenance, testify to the importance of trade, which increased with the construction of the port and the Via Traiana. The splendid head of Attis with the typical Phrygian cap, belonging to a statue of the Hadrianic age carved in fine white marble, is a testimony to the spread of the cult of eastern origin of the Great Mother of the Gods Cybele.

But how were the disabled treated in antiquity ? Regarding physical disabilities, there are studies that allow us to say that already in prehistoric times the community took care of them, as stated by Professor Fabio Martini of the University of Florence, an archaeologist, after analyzing the findings in the Romito Cave in the province of Cosenza (a UNESCO site, it is one of the strengths of the University of Florence’s prehistoric archaeologists’ projects), which he has been analyzing for years and whose study whose conclusions can be read.

Photo: the Egnatia Archaeological Park.

Archaeology to help the disabled: in Fasano, Apulia, the experiment

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