Keywords

1 Introduction

Throughout the history of Western society, the classical Greek and Roman world has figured as a model for architectural and spatial design and planning, with regard to both individual buildings and entire cities and landscapes (Fig. 12.1). It might therefore come as a surprise that classicists—those scholars who actually study the classical world—have refrained from employing classical models to further modern needs. They investigate ancient art and architecture and even ancient town planning, but usually only as examples of the unique character of classical civilization. In this paper, we observe that in recent decades approaches have changed in this regard and that classical archaeologists have much to offer to modern spatial planning and design. In regard to these changes, we will demonstrate how archaeological and heritage information can be integrated in geodesign-informed spatial planning and the role that geospatial technologies can play in this integration. A Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) has been developed and deployed for an urban design task in Testaccio, a neighbourhood in Rome, the very heart of Classical society. Our evaluation of this case study will conclude with suggestions for further promoting the mutually beneficial interchange between archaeology and gedesign.

Fig. 12.1
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Classical inspiration: Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C. Photo by Geoglance

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2 Recent Trends in Classical Archaeology and Heritage Studies

The changes that we refer to are of a contextual nature. First, in spatial terms, classical archaeologists have traditionally focused mainly on the study of ancient cities and, within them, of classical monuments in relative isolation, that is, as highlights in the history of European art and architecture. However, as a result of successive, post-WWII stages of theoretical thinking, ranging from processual and Marxist to contextual approaches, the city and its monuments are now analysed in their widest spatial and social contexts (Bernard Knapp 1992; Bintliff 1991; Morris 1994; Millett 2007; Osborne 1987). Studies focus not only on emperors and aristocrats, but also on common people and slaves—the ‘people without history’, to quote from a famous book by anthropologist Eric Wolf (1982)—and on the world beyond the city, from the fertile countryside to marginal landscapes such as marshes and mountains. Many excavations are now carried out on the periphery of modern Rome, to investigate ancient harbour and industrial areas, rural villas, vineyards and drove roads. Likewise, spatial analyses are performed to relate all these elements to each other.

A related shift can be observed in archaeological heritage management. Nowadays, following European treaties such as the European Convention on the Protection of the Archaeological Heritage and the European Landscape Convention, when we talk about the archaeological heritage of the city of Rome we refer to the entire assemblage of physical traces of the ancient landscape within the modern territory of Rome, from monuments to simple cottages, and from marble statues to the pits of ancient vineyards.

A second factor that is important to understand is that changing attitudes towards the Roman heritage is of a chronological nature. Most of the archaeological monuments in the modern city date to the Imperial period. On the one hand this is because in that period construction techniques had reached their apogee, which of course influences the lifespan of monuments and buildings. On the other hand, sustainability is also heavily influenced by later perceptions of the very same objects. From the latter perspective it has to be pointed out that throughout the later Roman history, particularly Imperial heritage has been cherished and preserved, excavated and restored, with the aim of glorifying the Rome of the emperors (e.g. Manacorda and Tamassa 1985; Painter 2005). The monuments have become symbols of that glory.

But there is of course much more than the Imperial monuments: the Roman landscape was and still is highly dynamic. Following the same theoretical approaches mentioned above, the chronological context has widened significantly in both archaeological narratives and heritage management. Attention is also being paid to the Iron Age hut compounds on the Roman hills that preceded the classical period (e.g. Carandini 2007), to the periods of disintegration of the city and to the landscape of ruins of the Middle Ages (Menighini and Santangeli Valenzani 2007). Some even specialize in the archaeology of industrial buildings of the last century, or in the modern Roman landscape (Bjur and Santillo Frizell 2009). In fact, attention is slowly shifting to a completely diachronic history of the entire urban landscape of Rome from prehistory to modern times. In this context, our colleagues at the Swedish Institute in Rome, who are working on the Roman Via Tiburtina, speak of ‘urban landscape archaeology’, namely the study of the present-day urban texture in all its historical diversity, as a palimpsest of closely interwoven histories (Bjur et al. 2009). Central to this are the continuous transformation processes that have been responsible for this palimpsest.

A third change that can be observed in archaeological heritage management, also in Rome, concerns the very concept of heritage. This is a complicated concept, one that arouses many different associations and that is used by many scholars in different ways. Archaeologists dealing with heritage have commonly emphasized its relation with the past. Archaeological heritage is considered primarily a source to reconstruct the past; being able to read, to interpret this heritage is a premise for understanding the past. This approach can be generalized under the label of historicism (Kolen 2005, pp. 70–76).

Other scholars, however, emphasize that heritage is related primarily to the present. In this perspective, heritage is argued to relate to an idea, that is, the idea of having inherited something, of being the rightful heir to an object, a building or a specific past. In this case, heritage is perceived as a modern construction; it belongs to the domain of the present and is often related to political, ideological or economic use of the past. This approach can be defined as constructivism (Kolen 2005, pp. 70–76). It became popular in the 1980s through major works such as those of Hobsbawn and Ranger (1983), Lowenthal (1985) and Nora (1984–92). In this perspective, the past is not perceived of as an objective historical reality. The approach to the past and its interpretation at any given time are rather seen as mirrors of contemporary society; monuments and museums are not neutral transmitters of the past but lieux de memoire, or places and modes through which communities, whether nations or other communities, create and safeguard their collective memory.

The strength of the more recent, constructivist approaches lies in promoting critical thinking on how the classical ideal has been constructed and used. These approaches encourage us to consider how the classical monuments have been idealized, and to accept that they have never stood there the way they are presented nowadays: they have been consciously excavated, reused or restored by popes, princes, politicians and even local peoples throughout the centuries. That is the case especially with the historical centre of Rome, which does not represent a homogeneous and stable state of affairs, reflecting the past ‘as it really was’; rather, it is a heterogeneous selection of monuments, buildings and artefacts of all ages, preserved and spatially arranged in a museum context through successive interventions.

The same critical approaches also encourage archaeologists to become aware of their being part of this continuous process of re-appropriation and redesign as well as of their responsibility towards contemporary society; again with regard to the Roman ‘open-air museum’, it is present-day society that maintains it, integrates it into the modern urban tissue and organizes it according to its own needs, whether these needs are related to identity formation, tourism, or urban design and planning.

3 The Challenging Testaccio Project

It is this awareness that increasingly opens up the work of classical archaeologists to the needs of present-day society (Burgers 2009). It is also central to the Roman research that we are involved in, that is, the ‘Challenging Testaccio. Urban Landscape History of a Roman Rione’ project (Fig. 12.2). This is a joint project between the Soprintendenza Speciale per I Beni Archeologici di Roma, the Royal Netherlands institute in Rome and VU University Amsterdam. The project is focused on the neighbourhood of Testaccio, in the sub-Aventine plain, immediately west of the Aventine hill (Fig. 12.3). In ancient times, the city’s river harbour was located here. The modern neighbourhood was built on top of it in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, to provide accommodation for working-class citizens. The neighbourhood is now being restyled and we have been invited to collaborate in a study of the history and archaeology of the Testaccio area, which is to inform the urban redevelopment process. The Challenging Testaccio project has three major aims that are very much in line with the recent trends in Roman archaeology and heritage management discussed above.

Fig. 12.2
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The Challenging Testaccio Project

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Fig. 12.3
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Location of the Roman neighbourhood of Testaccio

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The first aim is to carry out a comprehensive landscape study of the ancient harbour area. This means an in-depth investigation of the spatial organization and use of the harbour. To that end, we have for example carried out excavations of the standing remains of the Porticus Aemilia (Burgers et al. in press), one of the largest buildings of ancient Rome and a central element of the new harbour (Emporium). The excavations have been especially informative on the ancient phases of the building, revealing for instance the remains of a cella of a horreum, a large warehouse for the storage of grain.

However, the excavations have also enabled us to study significant layers of the post-antique phases of abandonment and reuse of the building and of the wider area around it. In the late Roman period, the area loses its original purpose and over the course of centuries transforms progressively into a suburban countryside, maintaining this character until the threshold of the twentieth century. This leads us to the second aim of the project: to do diachronic urban landscape archaeology as outlined above, namely to study the Testaccio palimpsest of successive processes of ancient urbanization, ruralization and re-urbanization.

The third aim is in line with the recent paradigm shift in heritage approaches discussed in the previous section; that is, to present our archaeological and historical analyses in such a way as to inform and inspire the ongoing urban regeneration process. We are doing so through public outreach events and urban design projects, in close collaboration with the local authorities, citizen groups, architects and urban planners. Moreover, we have developed geospatial tools to facilitate such collaborations. The remainder of the chapter will focus on the development of these tools and their deployment in a first experiment with archaeology and heritage informed planning and design in Testaccio.

4 The Spatial Data Infrastructure

All three components of the Challenging Testaccio project require varied and extensive data sets and new methodological frameworks informed by multiple disciplines. The foundation for the research conducted in the project is therefore an integrated platform that gives access to data and information used by the various disciplines, for both disciplinary and interdisciplinary research, related to this study area. Given the strong interest in place and space of the different disciplines, a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) is created as a vehicle to develop innovative research strategies enabling cross disciplinary knowledge exchange and providing tools for interaction.

Spatial Data Infrastructures have been discussed and constructed since the early 1990s. The aims and purposes for SDIs have evolved significantly. Whereas the first SDIs were static repositories with Spatial Information, nowadays SDIs are more focussed on providing a platform where users can efficiently cooperate to handle spatial data (Hennig and Belgui 2013; de Kleijn et al. 2013; Rajabifard et al. 2006). Within the Challenging Testaccio project, we approach an SDI as a collaboration platform in which geospatial tools and services enables users to interact and make use of each other’s disciplinary knowledge. Therefore, the user is placed at the heart of the development process, aimed at generating a useful and user-friendly SDI.

Developing the User-Centric SDI for Challenging Testaccio is done iteratively, through successive “waves” of design, deployment and evaluation. Together these different waves produce building blocks with information and functionality with which the Challenging Testaccio SDI is built. Focussing on particular sub projects enables us to get a clear view on the user requirements for data and functionalities, making the development process steered by users thus stimulating high usability.

So far, only the first wave has been fulfilled. This first wave was led by the SDI developers, as many of the participants in Challenging Testaccio had little to no knowledge of GIS and were therefore unable at the outset to accurately formulate their data and functionality needs. It included basic GIS training to programme participants, the collecting of all available historical and heritage data related to Testaccio, and the development and deployment of an app in a planning and design competition.

Starting point for developing the app is the idea that archaeological, historical and heritage information presented in an interactive mapping interface can support the dialogue between future oriented disciplines like spatial planning and architecture and past oriented disciplines like archaeology and history, enabling both to make better informed decisions in understanding, using and discovering historical and heritage features. The app was developed as a digital version of the biography of the landscape research strategy described and discussed by Roymans (Roymans et al. 2009). Based on the biography of the landscape research methodology, the information in the app has been elaborated to be usable for designers and spatial planners. Besides carefully selected historical maps, geotagged historical images and points of interest representing the museo diffuso developed by SSBAR (Sebastiani and Serlorenzi, 2008), a retrospective cartographic reconstruction was inserted into the app (de Kleijn et al. 2013). This cartographic reconstruction is obtained by analyzing historical maps in combination with an analysis of archaeological excavations. It contains thematic maps representing all significant transformations of Testaccio. The spatial information available in the app is also accessible through services for other purposes. However, since the app is meant to be used outdoors, a direct connection between the SDI services and the app is not in place. All spatial information are integrated in the app and stored locally on the device.

To test the hypothesis that the app stimulates interdisciplinary interaction resulting in better historic and heritage informed decisions an experiment was organised. Thirty-one architecture students, divided in groups of three, were given the task to develop a design for a particular square in Testaccio. Half the groups worked with the app, the other half with conventional sources including books, maps and photographs, enabling to measure differences between the different groups by analysing their results and by questionnaire surveys before and after the design task.

The experiment was done on a relatively small sample and the participants were presumably slightly biased since they were educated to design with heritage and informed of the organisers’ objectives. Nevertheless, the results of the experiment do suggest that, overall, the architects considered the app useful to the task (De Kleijn et al. forthcoming). Participants stated that they used 40 % (n = 17) of their time in consulting the app during the design task. The percentage they were willing to reserve budget to develop the app is 20 % (n = 31). A more detailed examination of the questionnaires that were completed by the participants will need to reveal which data and functionalities they found particularly useful.

This analysis will be the starting point for involving designers and planners closely in the further development of the SDI and tools such as the app. The app was developed based on insights from previous attempts at heritage and planning integration (Bosma et al. 2010; Elerie and Spek 2010; de Kleijn et al. 2013). Yet, the data and functionality of the app, including the cartographic reconstruction and the interface, were developed by non-architecture past-oriented researchers. Furthermore, to promote truly transdisciplinary methods, follow-up experiments in subsequent waves should also involve participants from disciplines other than planning and design. Nevertheless, the GIS training, data inventory and experiment have produced valuable first building blocks for the SDI.

5 Conclusions

The geodesign framework has always had the scope to involve archaeological and historical information in analysis, design and evaluation tasks. Yet, the changing character of archaeology, as outlined in this chapter, provides new opportunities to fulfil this potential. Archaeologists have widened their spatial, chronologic and thematic scope and become more inclined to connect their research to the present and the future. As a result, the information they produce is more attuned to the needs of planners and designers. As highlighted by the Testaccio design competition, when presented in attractive and interactive formats, this information can inform spatial interventions. Yet, our evaluation of this competition also highlights that more is required in order to facilitate a creative exchange between the past and future oriented disciplines and develop truly transdisciplinary methods. In particular, representatives of these disciplines should be given joint task, to become acquainted with each other’s methods and to stimulate the formulation of new, joint lines of research. As highlighted by the Testaccio SDI, geospatial technologies can play a facilitating role in this process, but only if the users are closely involved in their development.