Into the sea of intimacy

Catalogue of Exhibition held in Trieste, ex Pescheria – Salone degli Incanti since December 17th 2017 until May 1st 2018

«…The Atlantic and the Pacific are seas of distance, the Mediterranean a sea of propinquity, the Adriatic a sea of intimacy…».

We started from here, from the words of a prominent voice recounting the Adriatic, Predrag Matvejevic. We have chosen a single narrative voice – underwater archaeology – to recount the thousand tales of the Adriatic, and we have favoured stories that the sea has itself conserved on the seabed or washed up along its coastline: ancient coastal landscapes, settlements, structures of ports and landings, shipwrecks, harbour dumping grounds and findings without context. We have entered the lagoons and travelled up some of the rivers, to access the “extended” space of the Adriatic, in search of ghost ships and harbours swallowed up by emerging lands. Shipwrecks, milestones of sea routes, illustrate the flows of goods coming from different areas of the Mediterranean, with cargos that were assembled, divided and radiated out to the great emporia of the Adriatic, epicentres of trade networks, as takes place today in large trading centres.

RITA AURIEMMA is archaeologist and professor in the Department of Cultural Heritage at the Salento University. The focus of her research is landscape archaeology, especially coastal and underwater (which is, to use the words of Graeme Barker and John Bintliff, “an integrated way of understanding humans in dynamics landscapes”) through the reflection upon geomorphological and paleoclimatic issues, the study of forms and modes of coastal settlement in antiquity and dynamics of the interaction between man and his environment. Her investigations aim to understand, protect and increase the cultural value of these seascapes, also through the creation of Geographical Information Systems. She is currently Director of Department of Cataloguing, Training and Research of the Regional Authority for Cultural Heritage (ERPAC) of the Autonomous Region Friuli Venezia Giulia.