This investigation departs from an understanding about the necessity to reconcile the presence of archeology and the contemporary transformation processes, aiming to investigate its role in the development of society. Thus, this work proposes a wider investigation of the space where archaeology is displayed, looking to answer one main question: What can be the role of archeology in the development processes that define the spatial and social organization of society today?

The proposed question is the justification for the chosen space of experimentation. It is no longer possible to look into the contemporary ongoing transformations avoiding the phenomena that have been developed in the countryside space.¹

In the past decades, while architects and urban planners have focused their efforts on understanding, measuring and categorizing the processes that take place in the space of the city, the countryside has been the subject of most dramatic transformations, which have changed the social and spatial organization of this territory. The hinterland² space has become more and more a utilitarian territory, an operational landscape, where the forces of mechanization and increase of technology have led to a space conformation shaped mainly by dynamics aligned to global and capitalist processes (Figure 1).

In this manner, many erstwhile hinterlands, or parts thereof, are transformed into configurations of large-scale territorial ecological machinery: mechanized assemblages of human and nonhuman infrastructure oriented towards capital accumulation within a planet-encompassing profit-matrix.³

Figure 1 © Daily Overview.

In 1970, Henry Lefebvre envisioned such process, coining the term Urban Society⁴ to describe the resulting process of global industrialization. Lefebvre established a critical point where the urban concentration, rural exodus, the indiscriminate extension of the urban fabric, and complete subordination of the agrarian to the urban would lead the society towards complete urbanization.⁵

“From this moment on, the city would no longer appear as an urban island in a rural ocean, it would no longer seem a paradox, a monster, a hell or heaven that contrasted sharply with village or country life in a natural environment”⁶. The global territory would then be ruled by “planetary social and environmental relations, imposing new constraints upon the use and transformation of the worldwide built environment, unleashing potentially catastrophic inequalities, conflicts and dangers”⁷. The expansion of the urban, analogous to the erosion of the countryside, led to the dissolution of the city and its dematerialization, where “everything is spread out in the same way everywhere, from highways to luxury residential condominiums, shopping centers, or the small house you live in”⁸. This process overtook the global territory and finally led to the loss of identity of both city and countryside, the abandonment of the historical center and the environmental degradation of the hinterlands (Figure 1).

But historically the landscape exists “for reasons other than strictly practical and utilitarian”⁹. The landscape formation is also a cultural process¹⁰ and dynamic construction¹¹ “with cultural systems structuring and organizing people’s interactions with their natural environments”¹². Thus the landscape is strongly connected with the consolidation of culture, understood as the overlapping of time and spaces, resulting in an ever changing territory.¹³ Throughout all of history, communities have transformed:

[...] their physical surroundings into meaningful places on particular patterns of morphology and arrangement and through physical modifications, intimacies of experiences and sharing of memories, communities reshape the natural settings of their geographical spaces to legitimize the meanings they bestow upon the landscape.¹⁴

In Brazil, for instance,

[...] indigenous modes of inhabitation, both in the pre-colonial past and in the modern present, not only leave profound marks in the landscape but also play an essential role in shaping the forest ecology. Vast tracts of forests [...] that we perceive as natural are in fact cultural landscapes with a deep human past. [...] In this way, the forest can be interpreted as a cultural artifact in itself and interpreted through the syntax of spatial designs.¹⁵

Through this perspective, “forests are the product of long-term and complex interactions between human collectives, environmental forces and the agency of other species, themselves actors in the historical process of “designing the forest””¹⁶. Thus any possible approach towards conciliation between operationalization and cultural heritage would have to consider these profound aspects involving both natural and cultural landscapes.

Under these constraints the role of archaeology is clear. Its enrichment can provide an important contribution to the consolidation of memories and meaning of places. But, does this apply to a territory that tends to be uninhabited and has been extensively operationalized? But, does this apply to a territory that tends to be uninhabited and has been extensively operationalized? Would the function of the historical landscape then be to counter the operational dominance of the hinterlands? And if this is the case, is it possible to reconcile operationalization, nature and culture?

In order to explore these issues we chose a territory of experimentation. The aforementioned picture, in many aspects very generic, finds its specificity in the fields of Alentejo, in the south of Portugal. A region that can be understood as a mutating territory, where roman villas, aqueducts, and a wide range of archaeological structures are encrusted in “a world formerly dictated by the seasons and the organization of agriculture”¹⁷, but completely detached of the contemporary forces that guide the current territory organization.¹⁸

Spread into this operational landscape, as islands incrusted into the sea of planetary urbanization,¹⁹ ancient structures are displayed without any kind of interconnection, completely detached from the ongoing transformations that are constantly reshaping its surrounding landscape. These remnants have left traces of their ancient organization, and represent some of the last structures that are not conditioned by the operational character of the territory. Their presence can be then interpreted as an opportunity to reimagine the countryside space, through the creation of a net of meaningful places that offer ways of breaking down the divisions between operational, natural and cultural landscapes (Figure 2).

Figure 2 © Author.

It is not an exaggeration to divide Portugal in two main regions; the north and the south. Geographically defined by the Tejo, the dichotomy between those is not only supported by natural aspects (topography, vegetation, and climate), but also by its demographic and territorial organization. (Figure 3).

Figure 3 © Author.

About this contrast, Orlando Ribeiro says:

The first, more Atlantic, rich in water, verdant, where the Nation became a State, dominated by its demographic density, the second more mediterranean, newly parched by long summers, sparsely populated, belatedly integrated into the national community.²⁰

This short description gives us a precise image of the inequalities that permeate the country. The north, densely populated, where inhabitants are concentrated in few cities, finds on its fragmented plots and slopes a support to an intensive agriculture production. Instead, on the contiguous fields of the south, the flat topography and lack of water historically favored grazing and extensive cultivation methods.

But if it is in the north where nowadays the population is concentrated, it was the south the entry door of all mediterranean cultures that influenced the development of this territory.²¹ “Phoenician and Greek colonization, a reflection of the brilliant Betic civilization of Tartessos, Roman and Arab occupation, which both moved from the South to the North and in the South left a deeper crease”.²²

This does not mean that in the north of the country traces of roman occupation cannot be found. As described by Leite de Vasconcellos, in Portugal “the Roman occupation extended so far that we cannot walk one single league without showing any evidence of it - ruins, ceramics, coins [...]”²³. But, despite the Arabic domination, whose vestiges, being more recent, often overlapped previous roman traces, it is definitely in the southwest portion of the country, especially in the low fields of Alentejo, where the roman occupation found its apogee in Portugal. “There are the ruins of the main cities and Roman monuments and where the richest and most prestigious Moorish settlements were located”.²⁴

At the beginning, the roman occupation established new limits to the agrarian units, giving rise to the roman latifundia that would later be translated into the Aerdade Alentejana and the Monte.²⁵ The cultivation of wheat, vine, olive, and fruit trees replaced the cereal crops of the slopes, mainly present in the north of Portugal. Finally new industries and mines were built, that combined with the agrarian system of villas, Casais and Pequenos sítios, established a new productive and operational landscape.

The implementation of a new agrarian structure led to profound changes in the dynamics of the countryside space, reorganizing its social, economic and political functioning.²⁶ This changing process cannot be situated before the first century D.C²⁷ and do not only refer to the construction of the villas, but to the consolidation of a hierarchical system complemented by the Casais and Pequenos Sítios.²⁸ Those structures were displayed according to the fertility of the soil, the hydrography and topography. This explains the non-uniform occupation and distribution of these structures all over the territory (Figure 4), and opposes the ancient landscape to its current homogeneous organization.

Figure 4 Source: Lopes (2006).

But, if the Roman agrarian structure is largely opposed to the current hinterlands organization, how was the latifundio consolidated in Alentejo? What happened in between? Those are the questions that we expect to answer below.

In Alentejo, the consolidation of the latifundia (Figure 5) is a historical process whose beginning dates from the process of Reconquista. By this time, the necessity of defending the territory motivated the donation of huge parcels of lands to the feudal lords, that became responsible for its protection and development.²⁹

Figure 5 © Author.

This does not mean that there is no influence of the roman’s countryside over the current hinterlands landscape. There is for sure a historical continuity between the roman agrarian system and the contemporary land organization. But definitely this influence does not refer to the properties size nor to the current land ownership structure. Instead, it is related to the spatial overlapping between some ancient and contemporary agrarian structures.

For instance, the Herdade Alentejana and the Monte were built over the traces of the Villae and the Casais. Geographical constraints, such as the availability of natural water sources, soil fertility and topography explain this correlation. Also, some ancient paths and roads are still active, which clearly express a historical continuity on the territory’s dynamics functioning.

But the land concentration and agglomeration around the urban settlements is mainly explained by the wars that ravaged this territory during the middle ages, and made it mandatory to search for safety and protection around the fortified villas and castles. Orlando Ribeiro writes about the territorial structure of Alentejo at this time: “Before the settlement, the limits of the property were fixed, immobilized in the hands of great lords, magnates, religious and military orders, nobles, holders of land and cattle”.³⁰

Due to the lack of people, the vast and uniform lands needed to be developed under an extensive regime, and until the XIX century, the cultivation of lands were restricted to the best soils around the urban settlements. It is also interesting to notice that the concerns about the Latifundio Alentejano dates back to the 17th century:

The flaws of the large estate, absenteeism, low income, routine, social inequalities, have preoccupied reflective spirits since the perspicacious economists of the 17th century. One thinks of subdivision, of the division of large agrarian units into small tracts of land where settlers would settle who would make them produce through intensive exploitation, creating wellbeing for them and wealth for the Nation.³¹

But despite the ownership structure, until the second half of the XIX century, the agricultural production in Alentejo was a complex and diversified system, focused on supplying local urban settlements. This diversity is clearly illustrated in the first Agriculture Chart of the Beja Council, developed by Gerardo A. Pery between 1882 and 1883. At that time, the productive matrix of Alentejo was not only composed of cereal crops and olive groves but also included the cultivation of grapes for consumption and production of wine, horticultural crops, vegetable gardens and orchards. Together, almond trees, fruit groves and vast plains covered with arable crops used to shape the landscape of the region (Figure 6).

Figure 6 Source: Gerardo A. Pery (1883).

It was only after the incentive to expand national wheat production in the XIX century that the virgin lands were finally explored. From this point forward, the traditional production was systematically replaced by intensive monoculture fields and the products were sent either to the south to supply the touristic coast of Algarve or to the north to be consumed by the most populated and developed regions. Those lands, where the water is scarce and the population sparse, saw its diversified agriculture matrix replaced by one that mainly follows global chains of production.³² As a consequence, the meridional region of Alentejo, where the Romans once chose to place its main cities and monuments, was then relegated to a secondary role, segregated from the Atlantic core of the country.

This logic could have been changed in 1930 when a railway connection between Sines and Moura was proposed: a major infrastructure project through which the agricultural products cultivated in the fertile soils of the so-called Barros de Beja would be distributed to the rest of the country (Figure 7). The plan, which has never been carried out due to the financial crisis that hit the national railway company in the 30s, would have restored a historical east-west connection that had structured this territory for centuries.

Figure 7 © Author.

Through a detailed analysis of the ancient routes of this territory Cedric Lavigne recognized an important axis (V10) that dates probably from a period prior to the roman occupation³³ (Figure 8). Crossing the region of Barros de Beja, this road used to represent a fundamental connection to the civitas of Pax Iulia,³⁴ allowing agriculture products to reach the coast of the continent. Along this path, several roman villas and dams were displayed, giving support to the agriculture activity of the region.

Figure 8 Source: Cedric Lavigne (2006).

The exact location of this path is a matter of discussion between scholars and researchers. Each one of those have drawn this route in a different way, but all of them converge towards the existence of a direct connection towards the sea, linking the roman operational landscape to the main trade routes of the country (Figure 9). This axis continued to be used until the last century, through which traditional products were moved to supply the region of Alentejo and bring them to the coast (Figure 10). The abandonment of the aforementioned plan kept Alentejo as a marginal territory to the country’s main production chains.

Figure 9 See Mantas (2009).

Figure 10 The information is retrieved from the Chart of the Beja Council, Gerardo A. Pery, 1883.

Risking its water resources, the contemporary Latifundio Alentejano strides towards the complete depletion of the lands, and subjugate its cultural palimpsest, buried under its fields, which today serve more to boost the national trade balance than to feed the hands of those who work them. The impossibility of implementing alternatives to the current ownership structure “prevented the formation of a meticulous agriculture, where man is attached to the land, for the love of what is his, for the interest of profit and for the hope of the just reward of work and toil”³⁵. Thus, the consolidation of the Latifundio Alentejano is a process which final consequence is the loss of identity of a territory ruled by its “large agrarian units, the distant hills and the rare villages full of people, involved in the latifundia network”³⁶.

The contrast between the ancient and current land use of the region is clear. The increase of wheat production led to the expansion of the agriculture frontier and the exploration of virgin fields (Figure 11). The development of intensive agriculture in the region has been supported by major infrastructures projects, such as the creation and interconnection of dams, that guarantee a proper irrigation system to the intensively cultivated lands, but risks the existence of the region’s ancient hydrology (Figure 12). The dams, combined with the presence of wind turbines, solar panel fields and massive irrigation infrastructures creates a new net of landmarks, related exclusively to the operationalization of this territory (Figure 13). Those are our ‘contemporary castles’. These transformations have drastically misconfigured the region landscape, and the medieval and centralized territory organization has been slowly replaced by a decentralized matrix.³⁷ But if in one hand the fragmentation of the centrality of the city led to the weakening of urban occupations and the consequent loss of identity of the territory, it also “harbors new opportunities for the democratic appropriation and self-management of space at all scales”³⁸.

Figure 11 © Author.

Figure 12 © Author.

Figure 13 © Author.

The backbone of the reconciliation of old and contemporary organizations could be the reactivation of the east/west axis, running from the Guadiana river to the Sado river. The recovery of this east/west connection intends to bring to life a historical axis and a meaningful order associated with it, while simultaneously fostering new sustainable productive policies.

Based on the analysis developed above, we propose a confrontation between ancient concepts of territorial formation and the current Alentejo’s countryside organization.

In Roman times for instance, the idea of civitas was strongly connected with the idea of continuity between the city and the hinterlands that support its existence. As explained by Conceição Lopes:

The civitas is not a thing. Not even a space. The civitas is a body where various spaces are recognized-socio-political space, political-administrative space, socio-cultural space, economic space, cultivation space, etc.- each with its own temporal scale (that of time of its construction) and its operating rhythms.⁴⁷

This image radically counters the current relation between the city and the countryside in Alentejo, which disconnection has led to the urban center’s emptying and reduced the countryside to a mere operational territory.

As an alternative to the current scenario we envision a system that anchors its structure on the natural resources of the land. On the understanding that the ancient agrarian system was based in the cultivation of the most fertile fields and linked to the hydrographic regional network, we propose the creation of an agricultural reserve, articulated along the aforementioned historical east-west axis. This new net of productive landscapes aims to feed the meridional region of Alentejo and present an alternative to the current production matrix, mainly conditioned by global chains of production.

In fact, we believe that the restoration of the east -west axis in Alentejo can represent an opportunity to agglomerate infrastructure features along a new proposed system of both operational and meaningful spaces. Agriculture fields of traditional products, areas for alternative energy sources production, leisure spaces, archaeological sites and the reactivation of territorial mobility infrastructures (such as the ancient roman road) can be combined in order to (re)establish territorial and ecological connections, increase accessibility, bring economic development to the area and (re)structure the spatial and social organization of the territory according to a “cultural landscape approach”⁴⁸ (Figure 19).

Figure 19 © Author.

Aiming to ensure food self-sufficiency of the meridional region of Alentejo,⁴⁹ we propose the development of a new productive landscape, that not only diversifies the production matrix of the region, but safeguard its hydric resources. Taking as a base the above presented cartography, we envision the development of an autonomous net of spaces that present us an alternative for inhabiting the countryside.

Stressing the symbiosis between culture and nature, our proposal aims at consolidating a scenario for a contemporary landscape where the development of new management policies of heritage goods are combined with enhancement of mobility and implementation of green infrastructure systems.

Built over the traces of its ancient landscape, this new image for the countryside stands against the unrestricted extension of the urban and the fragmentation of the city, establishing nuclei of autonomous modes of inhabitation, which do not aim to replace the centrality of urban settlements, but actually to reinforce their existence. In this way, the non-urban landscape ceases to belong to a non-inhabited in-between space, and reconnects the city to the territory that has been historically structured by its presence.

Arguing in favor of a regional planning based on the presence of heritage, we further develop an analysis of the ancient landscape formation in Alentejo, over which we propose to integrate the historical palimpsest and contemporary infrastructure systems.

The landscape formation is a process both continuous and disruptive. As a sample of this duality we must cite the roman’s countryside consolidation process. As explained before, the Romans took advantage of existing agrarian structures to (re)organize their hinterlands. But there were also disruptive gestures; new limits to the agrarian structure were traced and the land ownership structure was reorganized. Later, the contemporary latifundia was consolidated around the presence of the previous roman agrarian units, namely the villae and the casais. But once again the properties were redefined, giving rise to the current ownership organization and land concentration. This indicates that the historical process through which the land structure in Alentejo has been reconfigured is based both on continuity and disruptiveness.

Taking in consideration the above mentioned environmental issues regarding the presence of the latifundia network, and considering the fact that the roman villas were displayed according to the availability of natural water sources, we propose the creation of an alternative agricultural reserve, composed by small properties and designed according to the presence of the villae. Through this we envision to keep the historical continuity in the territorial organization of the countryside and to consolidate a disruptive gesture towards the Latifundio Alentejano.

This alternative production matrix, irrigated through the natural hydric system of the region, and composed by vineyards, horticultural crops, vegetable gardens and orchards, counter the intensive agriculture activity that has misconfigured the landscape and risks its natural water sources.

By proposing an agrarian reconfiguration that fragments the ownership in Alentejo, the project prompts the appearance of autonomous modes of inhabitation that do not only aim to promote social and economic development for the region but to rescue its historical and identity values. Thus, the location of roman villas⁵⁰ become central points of a new meaningful and operational net of spaces, overlapped to the current territorial structure, and organized along the historical east-west axis of the meridional region of Alentejo.

In order to establish a net of new agriculture fields, we faced the necessity of defining its extension and limits. Thus, a first question arose; how to reinterpret the roman territorial occupation based on the location of the villae?

A recurring issue regarding heritages structures, sites and areas has been their extent and boundaries.⁵¹ As stated by Graham Fairclough “[...] unlike monuments and sites, landscape has no edges or boundaries”⁵², and its multiple owners and stakeholders might increase the complexity of its definition. Regarding the cultural landscapes setting, the ICOMOS Xi’an Declaration (2005) establishes that it should include:

[...] interaction with the natural environment; past and present social or spiritual practices, customs, traditional knowledge, use or activities and other forms of intangible cultural heritage aspects that create and form the space as well as the current and dynamic cultural, social and economic context.

From this understanding, the effort of defining such archaeological spaces, took as a starting point the work developed by Cedric Lavigne over the ancient agrarian structure of this territory, analyzing, through an aerial interpretation method, the traces of its ancient parcels. Thus, virtually defining what we will call in this work the “Lavigne universe”, an area that embraces a triangle formed by the cities of Beja (the current Pax Iulia and capital of Alentejo), Faro and Vidigueira, we established a field of experimentation where different methods of defining the limits of our proposal could be tested, and later expanded to the territory as whole.⁵³

Lavigne identifies several agrarian structures, which overlapping gave rise to the current state of the landscape. Among those structures Lavigne highlights the presence of an ancient parcels set (Figure 20), which morphogenesis seemed to be conditioned by long distance ancient routes. Even though the exact dating of those territorial structures cannot be precisely defined, Lavigne concludes that they might have been created between the Iron Age and the beginning of the Roman occupation. Despite the fact that most of those shapes are now fossils (not active), some reminiscences of its net can still be identified, and those shapes are the ones that apparently cross the centuries in a most determinant way.

Figure 20 Cedric Lavigne (2006).

Even possible traces of a Roman centuriation, whose layout or even existence could not yet be precisely defined, do not have the same transmissibility as the chosen set of shapes. The centuriation on this area (if it existed), did not appear to have established a dominant organization of the territory and “the forms of this network therefore appear as the product of a process of self-organized creation developing in time and space”⁵⁴. Thus, regarding the chosen network, Lavigne concludes that “the hypothesis of a Roman centuriation, a planned object traditionally mobilized to interpret all networks somewhat extended in space, therefore seems to us to have to be discarded”⁵⁵.

Thus, by establishing a genetic link between the linear and surface forms,⁵⁶ those ancient parcels reach a historical and territorial dimension, basing its morphogenesis in regional structuring elements. Its transpassivity across centuries and legibility today justify their use as a principle for the definition of new proposed plots.

From this understanding a decisive question emerges: Could we use the boundaries of the roman agrarian properties to define the limits of the proposed intervention?

Even though many attempts towards the definition of the roman agrarian plots have been made,⁵⁷ and different scholars have already addressed this issue, most of them failed by considering that only the knowledge about the location of the ancient agrarian structures or its storage capacity is enough to define the boundaries of the plots.⁵⁸ About this, Maria Conceição Lopes writes: “The parcels that can be placed in relation to a group of buildings will never allow to reach the total extension of the property [...]” and:

Tracing property limits based only on the study of parcels presents some difficulties [...] The notion that a rural structure is not a static body, and that the land limits, as individual patrimony, are configured according to the dynamics of the society in which exchanges, sales, successions, usurpations of communal lands, the greater or lesser aggressiveness of the markets, the dynamics of the environment, are reflected in its internal organization, must closely inhibit any attempt at generalization. Even integrated into a general structure of organization of the rural space, such as the centuriation, the properties may, for the reasons indicated, assume over time characteristics and dimensions subject to a varied range of possibilities.

Therefore:

Delimiting the ownership of a villa means moving from archaeological fact to economic history; taking buildings and their supposed capacity to reproduce production yields as a reference may, therefore, be nothing more than an abstraction, naturally incompatible with a historical construction.⁵⁹

In the case of Beja we do not have enough information to define with any sort of precision the limits of the agrarian units that composed the civitas of Pax Iulia.⁶⁰ This would demand further archaeological research in order to address other kinds of constraints to the until now established. The existing data only allows us to define the infield, never the boundaries of the property. Taking this into consideration we felt the necessity to develop research through design to establish the limits of the proposed plots. This research was done overlapping the ancient organization of the territory,⁶¹ its hydric resources and its contemporary road network. The several attempts regarding this task are illustrated below. (Figures 21, 22, 23 and 24). The outputs of this preliminary analysis should not be seen as a precise reconstruction of the ancient parcels of the territory but as an attempt to shape the contemporary landscape through a historical continuity approach.

Figure 21 © Author.

Figure 22

Figure 23 © Author.

Figure 24 © Author.

Envisioning to work beyond the walls of the city, this work intends to present a territorial image opposed to its current spatial, economic and social organization, mainly based on the presence of the latifundia and its monoculture production. In this way, the apparent fragmentation of consolidated shapes gives us a tool to counter the homogenous space production in which the Alentejo territory has turned into.

The fragmentation itself presents us a way of reading the territory through a temporal perspective, recognizing the landscape as a “product of long-term and complex (inter)relationships between people and the environment”⁶⁵. Therefore we propose a simultaneous historical reading of the city and the countryside, understanding the landscape as “a product of change, of dynamic patterns and evolving inter-relationships between past ecosystems, history and cultures”⁶⁶.

In this way the drawing ceases to be an abstract representation of the historical landscape to somehow propose a reorganization of the territory based on its heritage. Those constellations of shapes, strongly linked with the hydrology of the region, represent an opportunity to safeguard the natural resources of the area.⁶⁷ In this way we envision the implementation of a historical landscape approach, offering:

[...] ways of breaking down the division between the natural and the cultural as a way of seeing, interpreting and understanding the world, seeking to replace these with more complex and holistic meanings.⁶⁸

Thus, this drawing aims to emphasize the indivisibility between culture and nature, stressing the “dynamic and evolving nature of human relationships and interactions with the environment, acting as a conceptual bridge between culture and nature, between tangible and intangible heritage, and across space and time”⁶⁹. In this process, as a reading and interpretation of the territory’s archeological map, the drawing becomes a tool through which it is possible to develop new regional planning policies, where agriculture, housing and new infrastructure systems can be influenced by the cultural landscape and its historical formation.