MODERNITY AND THE INDUSTRIALIZATION PROCESS
How did industrialization unfold in rural Western Europe? How did it impact and transform pre-existing rural societies and landscapes? What were their main economic and social characteristics and how can we delve into the material and local dimension of the process? Were there any social and gender inequalities in pre-industrial societies? How were these inequalities transformed over time? And last but not least, is the concept of modernity still valid to understand these processes?

These are questions that have been commonly tackled by scholars through decades, but have not yet received a satisfactory answer. The project INdustrialization and the Process of modernity: the ArChaeological Transformation of the rural world (18th-21st c.) (INPACT) will tackle these and other topics regarding the question of how the relationship between local communities and their environment changed as rural areas became industrialized, by analysing material evidence from archaeological and environmental perspectives. Moreover, the project will question the unwavering concept of ‘modernity’ as a one-way passage from ‘traditional’ to ‘modern’ societies, in which rural landscapes and societies are seen as passive subjects rather than active agents of change. This project departs from the basic hypothesis that the implementation of industrial economies entailed a complex process of transformation of the rural communities involved, with a far-reaching local and material dimension that has thus far been undervalued. Building on an interdisciplinary methodology including disciplines such as Archaeology, Botany or Anthropology, this project will delve into this material dimension of the process of industrialization.

The process through which industrial economies were implemented across Western Europe has deep historical roots, and is considered one of the fundamental causes of humanity’s irreversible impact on the environment, which is at the source of today’s social, economic and environmental concerns. This has commonly being tied to the concept of ‘modernity’, understood as a progressive and unidirectional passage from ‘traditional’ to ‘modern’ societies, and has usually been studied within Archaeology from an internal approach centred on the sites themselves, therefore regarding rural societies and their landscapes as two separate phenomena. As a result, the scholarship has largely overlooked the many ways in which the relationships between local communities and the environment have been transformed through time. Environmental Archaeology has come to question this idea, proposing a more elaborated process for the implementation of industrial economies based on the dialectics of the sites, local communities and their environment. This approach, as well as other more focused on sociology, questions the conception of modernity as an unidirectional and inevitable process from ‘underdeveloped’ and ‘disappearing’ rural economies to ‘developed’ industrial societies, instead considering it as a dialectical process that can only be successfully tackled in light of the complex interactions between societies and their environments.

We will develop this project in an specific location, specifically using as its case study the village of Casaio, in the present-day region of Valdeorras, Galicia (NW Spain). The interest of Galicia for the project is tied to the fact that more common lands have survived there than in almost any other European territory, due to a historical process of reacquisition by local communities. Analysing this process is key to understanding how local communities have confronted the implementation of industrial economies. The case of Casaio is particularly interesting and complex, as it presents a varied set of largely unexplored archaeological remains directly tied to INPACT’s objectives, and which are concentrated in less than 70 km2. Specifically, the research will be based on the study of three areas within the limits of Casaio:

Area 1: The common lands of the San Xil River (4.023 ha.) managed by neighbours (vecinos) of Casaio.
Area 2: The abandoned neighbourhood of Rumiña. This is one of the four neighbourhoods which had made up Casaio since the Middle Ages, in close relation with the management of the aforementioned common lands. The neighbourhood was abandoned through a process related to the area’s industrialization.
Area 3: The wolfram mine of Valborraz. Thismine is located along the streams leading into the San Xil, and was exploited from the end of the 19th century until its abandonment in the 1970s, with a deep impact in the landscape. Wolfram mining in north-western Iberia is directly related with the late industrialization process in Western Europe, as well as conflicts such as World War II.