Historical Geoanthropology in Venice

This essay deals with the natural-artificial reality of the lagoon of Venice, as a paradigmatic case that can contribute to an understanding of the broad cultural dimension of the Anthropocene. Indeed, we here deal with the low amplitude background signal of anthropogenic geomorphological and geoenvironmental agency. This should not be confused with the stratigraphic meaning of Anthropocene, since geologists are working towards the validation of the Anthropocene hypothesis by detecting specific markers which, from our perspective, correspond to high-intensity signal peaks at a geochemical level. Our geo-anthropological case, the geomorphology of Venice, has particular historical and symbolic relevance. Its environment has been transformed by humans and the elements over millennia to such an extent that it is impossible to neatly separate human agency from natural causes. We here discuss the entanglement of environmental factors, socio-economic drivers, and cultural-political elements of Venice as a paradigm of geo-anthropological processes in general.