Circum-Mediterranean ethnobotanical and ethnographic heritage in traditional technologies, tools, and uses of wild and neglected cultivated plants for food, medicine, textiles, dyeing, and handicrafts

The RUBIA Project

Maria Elena Giusti & Andrea Pieroni

Rubia1 is the name of a European research project, included in the V framework Programme, whose complete name is Circum-Mediterranean ethno-botanical and ethnographic heritage in traditional technologies, tools and uses of wild and neglected cultivated plants for food, medicine, textiles, dying and handicrafts ICA 3-2002-10023 Project.
This is an INCO–MED (International Scientific Cooperation Project - Mediterranean area) and it involves eight countries, five belonging to the community: Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Greece, Cyprus and three non-community countries, located on the other side of the Mediterranean: Algeria, Egypt and Morocco. Its reason lies in an agreement among institutions, Universities and national research Institutions and non and individual experts2. The project was born starting from consideration of the strong impact that the populations and cultures of the Mediterranean have had on administration of the environmental factors, governing and layout of the territory, on the availability of resources and its objective is to identify the things that have survived in particular in the rural areas of these regions, together with specific research within the communities of Russian-German and Turkish female immigrants in Germany. The information collected has been collated and partially used in a comparative perspective, considering the strong mutual influences that connect the use of plants and the traditional technologies associated with their use, in all of the areas examined:
Germany, North-Rhine Westfalia (in the Turkish and Albanian immigrant communities); Hohenloe Baden-Wurttemburg (in the early Russian communities in Germany); Kelmend (Albania).
Italy: Site 1 Bagnacavallo - RA (Emilia Romagna); Site 2 Capannori-LU (Tuscany)
Spain: Sierra de Aracena; Nature Reserve, Picos de Aroche (Huelva)
Greece: Crete (eastern and western regions)
Cyprus: Athienou-Livadhia and Paphos Vine regions
Morocco: District of Ouezzane
Egypt: S. Caterina and Dahab (Sinai); Mansoura region
Algeria: National Park of Chréa

As stated in the title, the keyword that supports it is the heritage of tangible and intangible knowledge and know-how, developed from close contact of human groups with the land and, therefore, with the products extracted from it.
The starting point is represented by identification of vegetable entities, but the main objective is to retrace the relative use and processes, so much so that if the limit imposed for food is that of spontaneous grass and neglected cultivations, for medicine and veterinary science the horizon extends and includes all healing processes, including the ones that do not exclusively use vegetable products, by virtue of the often uncertain borders between phytotherapy, superstition, religion and magic.
RUBIA therefore includes the territory, preservation of knowledge (with the promotion of experience of classification in museums of everything that is considered as heritage of national communities) and communication policies, in compliance with decisions of the European Parliament (deliberation of 22nd December 1988) related to the structure of the V Programme in terms of specific criteria related to research, technological development and diffusion activities (for the period 1998-2002), confirming the international role. Within this context “action” is promoted in order to achieve some of the general objectives, in agreement with the countries involved3.
The strategic area within which RUBIA is positioned refers to the preservation and possible implementation of strategies aimed at re-integration in use of knowledge and skills by the communities, including “knowledge and procedures related to nature and the universe” (The Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, UNESCO, October 2003)4.
The importance of this project, within the context of the guidelines defined by the European Union, lies in the novelties that it presents. Most importantly it is the first, among the ones promoted by the Community that combines ethno-botanical research and ethnographic research in a circum Mediterranean area and is the only one of the 58 previous ones (with reference to the last seven years) that includes the presence of anthropologists on the specific nature of cultural heritage, a field traditionally prerogative for archaeologists or art historians. With numerous ethnographic and specific ethno-botanical research carried out in the Mediterranean area, relatively few comparative studies have been performed and an inter and trans disciplinary approach has only been adopted on a sporadic basis, through programmed action and networks.
The small challenge launched by RUBIA is to find and define common methodological elaboration lines, in terms of the collection and assessment of data, among scholars related to different subjects; it does in fact include experts in the field of pharmacognosy, ethno-botany, agronomy, phyto-chemistry, botany and anthropology.
In the execution of work, ethnographic identification plays a very important role; the performance of our main function refers to sourcing of information (ethno)linguistic, (ethno)botanical, (ethno)ecologic, ethnographic (related to the fields to be explored that we have indicated as objectives) of existing things, in the various communities investigated: a kind of snapshot on the current situation, with incursions into the recent past through the memories of people interviewed. At the end of this survey, 900 interviews are performed; 700 identifications of botanical taxa and of the processes of collection, preservation, packaging, use in cooking, in medicine, in the textile industry, in the production of products and in the classification of hundreds of objects for traditional use. All of this information is collected in a specific data bank specifically that will only contain direct details and will not use the details already included in the literature.
The above may appear as a project in which a classification understanding dominates, but this is not the case. The collection (homogeneous in as far as possible) and the assessment of data only represents the common denominator, duly undersigned, with the intention of achieving solid bases for interpretation purposes and possible expansion towards research: we made this decision as we believe that it represents the start of rigorous work.
In the field of the community research projects, RUBIA has accepted and promoted some novelties5.
The first lies in overcoming a purely preservative hypothesis. The knowledge and traditional skills related to tangible goods (objects) or intangible goods (recipes, methods of collection and selection, phyto-medicinal preparations), the ones still used, even if just marginal or the ones still not forgotten and preserved in memories, represent a true heritage of the past, but they can and, in intentions, should represent a heritage for the present.
The Mediterranean cultures6 have made their mark on the natural environment, on the organisation and execution systems of the territory; they have for a long time used and modified it for reasons related to existence, at a later stage exploited, but on this occasion it is not our intention to investigate into the considerations of a micro-economic nature with regards to use of the plants as food or as materials to produce objects. However, what we are really interested in, fully aware that we cannot regain lost virginity, is that the enhancement of knowledge and skills can represent, within rather limited communities, moments of social aggregation and models for the development of initiatives that may have an effect on the territory: this is all about tourism or the recovery of artisan activities that, perhaps, through tourism itself can find a lost market. The possibility that it can open up on a European level, but even more important, in our specific case for Algeria, Egypt and Morocco.
The second novelty of this type of project lies in the importance that the community research policy attributes to diffusion and return.
This is mainly an ethical problem that we have recognised and has forced us to adopt the main principles of the ethical codes of the most important international companies7 with the same importance, in our case, of the norms that regulate the intellectual property defined by the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organisation)8 defined in Geneva in 2002 and undersigned by the Italian Government.
Save the fundamental rights to protect and safeguard autochthonous flavours, a fundamental aspect that involves the central network of return is without a doubt re-appropriation of the cultural heritage by the various communities through a new or, at best, increased awareness.

Albania

Italia

Spain

Greece

Cyprus

Morocco

Egypt

Algeria