Culture heritage in danger: archaeology and communities in sicily during the second world war (1940–45)
This multidisciplinary, innovative project investigates antiquities in the Second World War context in Sicily (1940–45). The island’s cultural and archaeological heritage was under major threat from Allied bombing, landing and military occupation. The project pursues to reconstruct contexts and social networks involving the national and military authorities, archaeologists and local communities, acting and ‘clashing’ in a state of war and emergency. In particular, our research aims:

a) to investigate how national, local civilian and military authorities dealt with the discoveries of archaeological finds in the area from construction of military structures by the Regio Esercito Italiano and Allied forces to the protection of antiquities;
b) to reveal how the war impacted on the cities and their populations and to reconstruct contexts and social networks involving the national and military authorities, archaeologists and local communities, acting and ‘clashing’ in a state of war and emergency;
c) to contextualise Sicilian archaeology in the wider European stage, comparing Sicily with other European contexts, where advancing war operations imposed exceptional measures to protect culture heritage (e.g. Belgium, France, UK, etc.).

In terms of methodology, all archival and archaeological data will be assessed to obtain a full historical reconstruction of events, conveyed into a GIS and published through a book and two papers. Targeted surveys would be also beneficial to trace evidence and remains of bunkers and camps at some Sicilian sites.

Our inquiry, which fully fits into the remarkable methodological pluralism of Ghent, is strongly interdisciplinary, because it embraces various subjects. They merge together in a fuller historical reconstruction and will therefore benefit historians, archaeologists, art historians and social studies experts, who are jointly interested in inspecting novel data on Sicilian antiquities, local communities and war contexts in the 1940s