Lo sguardo del geografo: Massimo Quaini, l’archeologia, la storia

[Machine translation] The essay discusses, starting from two different points of view, those of an archaeologist and a historian, the way in which one of the most important geographers of recent decades, Massimo Quaini, has undertaken a dialogue, not always successfully, with the sister disciplines of historical geography: archaeology and social history. The contribution reflects on Quaini's experimental path “towards a new geography” and on the numerous encounters, separations, parallel and divergent paths that have occurred during his research experience. Particular attention is paid to Massimo Quaini's scientific and cultural experiences and acquaintances that characterized his Genoese experience at various times, and in particular those of the Ligurian Study Center on Deserted Villages — from which the debates on the geography of populations and the history of material culture originated — and then those related to the Permanent Seminar on Local History and the long discussion around microhistory and its various outcomes. The essay therefore has a specific methodological and historiographical characterization, and is confronted with explicitly interdisciplinary perspectives that concern, among others, the history of the landscape and the environment, as well as social and cultural history.