95 Mindscape: ecological thinking, cyber-anthropology and virtual archaeological landscapes Maurizio Forte CNR-ITABC, Istituto per le Tecnologie Applicate ai Beni Culturali, Via Salaria, km.29,300, C.P.10, 00016, Monterotondo St., Roma, Italy, e-mail: maurizio.forte@mlib.cnr.it Living systems are units of interactions; they exist in an ambience[…]. A cognitive system is a system whose organization defines a domain of interactions in which it can act with relevance to the maintenance of itself, and the process of cognition is the actual (inductive) acting or behaving in this domain. Living systems are cognitive systems, and living as a process is a process of cognition. This statement is valid for all organisms, with and without a nervous system […]. Humberto R. Maturana , Autopoiesis and Cognition, 1980 Information visualization focuses on information, which is often abstract. In many cases information is not automatically mapped to the physical world (e.g.geographical space). This fundamental difference means that many interesting classes of information have no natural and obvious physical representation. A key research problem is to discover new visual metaphors for representing information and to understand what analytical tasks they support Gershon, N., Eick, S.G., and Card, S., 1998, Information Visualisation. “Interactions”: March/April, 1998, 9-15. Abstract Knowledge and diachronic interpretation of an archaeological landscape depends on factors of perception, self-referring, interaction (“feedback”) and cultural learning. The paper describes a new approach for the reconstruction of archaeological landscapes using virtual reality technologies within an eco-environment of simulation. The philosophical and epistemological approach derives from the ecological school of Bateson, Maturana, Varela and Ingold: the interpretation of the landscape depends on its relations, without context there is no communication. Therefore for interpreting the landscape we have to create the “map” in batesonian sense (The map is not the territory), the map is the virtuality, the “difference”. the territory is the reality. In theoretical sense we distinguish three levels of landscape to investigate and to interpret: mapscape (virtual landscape by GIS and spatial data), taskscape (activities and relations of the landscape), mindscape (perceived landscape, digital ecosystem). In conclusion, we will face up methodological and technological problems of the virtual reconstruction using OpenGl software and libraries in order to project, to reconstruct and to navigate the ancient landscape in real time. The new rules of this digital ecosystem will be autopoietic, in the sense that they follow ecological and cyber-anthropological theories. Each interaction in real time within the virtual landscape will produce difference and, through the difference, new ways of learning. 1 Introduction “Landscape ecology is a branch of modern ecology that deals with the relationships between man and his open and built-up landscapes” (Naveh, Lieberman, 1990). In the last 30-40 years “environment”, “space”, “place”, “landscape” and “ancient landscape” were central in the international debate in epistemological, philosophical, psychological, technological and morphological terms (Gibson, 1950, 1979; Forman, Godron, 1986; Zubrow, 1994; Forte, 1995; Allen, Green, Zubrow, 1990; Basso, 1996; Gaffney, Ostir, Podobnikar, Stancic, 1996; Ashmore, Knapp, 1999; Forte, 2000; Gillings, Wheatley, 2000; Lock, 2000; Chapman, 2000; Dodge, Kitchin, 2001). My cybernetic manifesto corresponds to the ecological school’s thought of Gregory Bateson: we are our relations and there is no distinction between mind and body; this approach is very important in the study and in the digital reconstruction of the landscape. A recent book, very interesting, of Tim Ingold, “The perception of the Environment” (Essays in livelihood, dwelling and skill, 2000) represents a good base of discussion of the arguments treated in this paper. In fact our thesis is that the reconstruction of an archaeological landscape passes Comparison of Lèvi Strass’s and Bateson’s views on mind and ecology (Ingold, 2000, 18) WORLD ECOLOGY OF MIND BATESON LEVI-STRAUSS MIND= BRAIN BRAIN ECOLOGY= WORLD