**Promoting Research and Landscape Experience in the Management of the Archaeological Networks. A Project-Valuation Experiment in Italy**

**Salvatore Giu**ff**rida 1,\*, Filippo Gagliano 2, Enrico Giannitrapani 3, Carmelo Marisca 4, Grazia Napoli <sup>5</sup> and Maria Rosa Trovato <sup>1</sup>**


Received: 15 April 2020; Accepted: 10 May 2020; Published: 14 May 2020

**Abstract:** Archaeological sites are part of the history and identity of a community playing a strategic role on the different scales of the cultural and economic common life. Whereas on the one end the most famous archaeological sites attract huge flows of tourists and investment, on the other hand, many minor archaeological sites remain almost ignored and neglected. This study proposes a project-evaluation approach devoted to the "minor" archaeological site development, outlining a territorial, socio-economic, and landscape communication pattern aimed at creating an archaeological network integrating other cultural and natural resources. As such, these networks get able to match the demand of customers who shy away from iper-consumerist tourism and want to deepen their knowledge of a place. The proposed approach integrates knowledge, evaluation, and design in a multiscale pattern whose scope is to foster and extend the archaeological research program, involving public and private stake/stockholders to widen the cultural-contemplative experience and promote further educational events concerning the themes of the local identity. With reference to the archaeological basin of Tornambè, Italy, a Web-GIS knowledge system has been drawn to provide the territorial information requested by the economic-evaluation multiscale pattern implemented to verify the cost-effectiveness of the project. The expected negative results of the economic valuation supported the allocation pattern of the considerable investment costs, as well as the hypothetic scenarios about the evolution of the cultural-contemplative experience due to the extension of the archaeological estate. Some disciplinary remarks propose a heterodox approach for a further interpretation of the economic results and financial indexes, by introducing the monetary dimension of such a social capital asset.

**Keywords:** archaeological basins; Web-GIS and Geodatabases; territorial marketing; cultural economics; land economy; tourism experience management; cultural estate; landscape heritage

### **1. Introduction**

The management of the cultural real estate heritage is de facto a central issue of territorial policies as this heritage plays an important role in creating the community identity, supporting local economic development [1], driving sustainable innovation of local businesses, and redefining the very concept of social well-being. The preservation and enhancement of cultural heritage, as a 'common good passed from previous generations as a legacy for those to come' [2,3], is promoted on global, European,

and national levels through specific programs, laws, and actions. The European Framework for Action on Cultural Heritage promotes an integrated and participatory approach to cultural heritage and—supported by the European Parliament—contributes to the mainstreaming of cultural heritage across European Union policies [4]. In Italy, where a great cultural heritage and an extraordinary archaeological heritage is concentrated, the high number of exceptional sites has contributed to spreading a general interest for art and culture, creating the basis for the concept of cultural basins [5] in which minor archaeological sites, that otherwise would remain marginal, form networks together with other resources.

The tourist sites of global or national importance attract huge financial resources and millions of tourists from all over the world every year, but they often generate territorial polarization that accentuates an unfair wealth distribution and affects peripheral areas. These sites face the impacts of overtourism [6–9], such as pollution and congestion, so much some limits on tourists access and stay need to be imposed for the preservation of the site itself, as in the case of the archaeological site of Machu Picchu in Peru, or in high naturalistic interest areas such as the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador. Conversely, the minor archaeological sites risk being abandoned due to the small tourist flows and the consequent public fund reduction.

The stratification and combination of multiple values and functions [10–12] in a territorial network connecting archaeological as well as ethno-anthropological and architectural features is coherent with the World Tourism Organization suggestions [13] on an alternative to predatory mass tourism, responding to the demand for slow tourism valuing the profound knowledge of a place, such as local traditions and products. Accordingly, alternative touristic itineraries should be identified as a success factor for reducing the effects of competition form the art cities and the most important tourist sites.

Among alternative models of tourism, such as Sustainable tourism—that can assure long term benefits to the local community and environment, as well as the tourists and tourist operators—, or Ecotourism—focused on travelling to wild and fragile areas and has the ethic goal of educating the traveller to the respect toward different cultures—, Slow tourism allows the traveller to get possession of time again, to be in tune with whatever surrounds him, interact to with local people, history and tradition [14,15]. Adopting a model of slow tourism allows putting into network different type of resources connected to a common theme and/or to a same territorial system in order to promote local resources and products which, otherwise, would not be economically feasible, as well as minor touristic sites which would not be able to attract flows of tourists. The implementation of this model requires appropriate marketing strategies, to build the supply and put it in the national and international tourism market in order to meet the demand. The marketing strategy should apply a systematic analysis of the slow tourist profile's and the most favourite activities, and verify strengths and weaknesses of the proposed territorial network in order to select the best actions to improve the supply. An application of this approach was proposed for the valorization of slow tourist itineraries between Italy and Slovenia in a project financed by the European Union and Slovenia within a cross-border cooperation program [16]. Moreover, marketing strategy could include the building of a brand to allow immediate identification of the 'territorial product', as proposed for the archaeological sites of the Pompeian pole [17,18].

So that demand for territorial networks evaluation and management tools [19,20] from the public institutions has grown, as well as, in response, the commitment from the science of appraisal and valuation in supporting political-administrative decision-making processes on the planning, programming and designing scale [21–28].

The strong connection of knowledge, valuation and project allows planners and decision-makers to generate multiple strategies aimed at promoting public consensus thus stimulating the participation of local communities [29], and at the same time to verify the consistency between outputs and outcomes, in terms of economic results [30].

The administration of the archaeological territory—concerning research (surface research, findings analysis and excavation campaigns programming) administration (the archaeological constraint subjection of the areas to be investigated) technical management (asset worksite and remains restoration) protection/promotion (on/off-site musealization of the remains)—requires specific professional and managerial know-how, and in Italy it is the exclusive responsibility of Superintendence of Cultural Heritage, applying generalized top-down decision-making processes. Some studies, however, promote the participation of tourists supporting a demand-oriented heritage management process complementary to the traditional supply-oriented one [31–33]. Such an approach focuses on the heterogeneous tourists' expectations outlining customer-oriented ways of fruition aimed at enhancing the customer service supply [34,35]. Other researches remark the need to include in management process other stakeholder groups and especially local communities [36] mostly concerned about the integration of the cultural heritage issue in the local socio-economic development [37,38]. Such an extension of the consensus deals with the natural conflict of values, expectations and scopes supported by different types of stakeholders (internal and external, private and public, economic and cultural, professional and common, etc.) to be involved [39] in the social communication process (public hearings, focus groups, citizen review panels, surveys, etc.) for new proposals ideas and perspectives [40,41].

In general, the economic profile of the archaeological assets is characterized by high investment costs and low and deferred streams of benefits [42] increasing over time. With the exception of some important archaeological parks, the negative results of their economic management is covered by public expenditure, whose amount can be considered the monetary measurement of the value a local community attributes [43–45] to the memory of its "ancient greatness", as well as a cultural-historic identity indicator.

The archaeological assets are quite different from primary goods, as so far as:


In the ground of the cultural heritage economics and in the prospect of a "circular economy" aimed at the progressive dematerialization of production and consume and mainly intended to create a culture of sustainability, valuation is committed to verifying how, in which extent, by and for whom economic development of land cultural assets characterized by mainly unspoiled potential and contextual territorial value, can be feasible.

In such prospect, this study proposes an integrated approach to knowledge, evaluation and design on two scales: on the territorial scale, a Web-GIS [46–49] Geodatabase-based knowledge approach allowed us to outline the landscape profile of the sites over the Province of Enna. On the local scale, it provided the spatial data describing the main "Value bearers" [50], involved in the project of research extension powering the cultural-contemplative experience supporting the promotion of the local economic activities and players.

Accordingly, the economic-financial analysis [51–54] aimed at outlining the efficiency profile of the development project proposed, although performed from the private player's perspective, tries to stress the favourable conditions of a coordinated land-economy-oriented policy integrating the visions and the missions of multiple, mostly public, players providing the socio-economic and political-decision context favourable to develop the archaeological basins culture and economy.

An archaeological basin is a territorial-landscape unit having a specific identity whose anthropology (including the economic framework) can be still related to the fundamental historic permanency as integrated into the multiple landscape dimensions [55]. So that the different basins constituting the archaeological asset of territory, should be defined as externally (from the landscape point of view) and internally (from an economic point of view) coherent territorial entities.

In such a prospect—that we assume as the political, institutional and economic condition for the sustainable development of low-value density wide territorial areas—the entities responsible for the protection and valorisation of the cultural asset, also according to the Italian Code of Cultural Heritage and Landscape currently in charge, demand behavioural patterns integrating multiple scales, subjects, scopes, and skills toward the common overall end of identifying in the permanence of the main outcrops of the ancient local civilization, the programmatic references of the socio-economic development of the settled communities.

Accordingly, the proposed approach outlines a project for the enhancement and musealization of a wide Sicilian inland archaeological basin (whose original core is the identified in the site of Tornambé in the Province of Enna, Italy). The general objective is the definition of the different dimensions of the project, involving the wide, intermediate and detail scales, public and private corporate players, and different kinds of actions, targeted to archaeological research development, to the opportunities of cultural and contemplative experiences, and to the promotion of entrepreneurial initiatives aimed at better finalizing the aforesaid activities. The specific object is the critical application of the cost-effectiveness analysis tools taking into account multiple scenarios validated by the prospect of connecting the multiple purposes of the subject involved, starting from the accounting of the investment and operating costs [56], revenues, and proposing the comparison of two different and somehow complementary interpretations of the specific findings. In fact, the application of the Discount Cash Flow Analysis confirmed that, despite the synergistic participation of public and private capitals and of various stakeholders, the economic feasibility remains a critical issue and the contribution of public expenditure is necessary. Rather, the socio-territorial and landscape context, powered by the public [57,58] intentionality and illuminated by the prevailing of the collective intelligence characterizing the local community identity, are assumed as the decisional long-run prospect supporting a more challenging entrepreneurial action in spite of the modest economic short-run results.

This share of public expenditure, which is a non-productive investment according to the market law [59], can be defined as a sort of equalization monetary transfer from major archaeological sites, that have active balance sheets, to minor archaeological heritage, and would implicitly constitute the minimum social value [60] given to historical and identity heritage of local communities.

The paper presents, in Section 2, the basic descriptive aspects of the basin of Tornambè. In Section 3, the methodological approach, articulated according to three dimensions of communication—territorial, socio-economic and landscape—and focusing on the Discounted Cash Flow Analysis (DCFA) carried out according to the arrangement of public/private commitments. In Section 4, the description of the results in the above-mentioned triple communicative pattern. In Section 5, a critical and proactive discussion of the results of the valuation output based on the comparison between two different (orthodox and heterodox) approaches. In Section 6, the conclusions that frame the different points of view and highlight in the valuation the prospects outlined based on the related results, concerning the commitment of public-private players in the creation of the identity of this landscape unit.
