Relação entre patrimônio material e patrimônio imaterial no meio rural - o nordeste algarvio (sul de Portugal)

Abstract

The cultural heritage of rural areas has material and immaterial dimensions that coexist and are observed and analyzed in an inseparable way. We will try to reflect on this relation between tangible patrimony and intangible heritage and its role in the social construction of cultural heritage and collective memory. In the northeast of the Algarve, situated in the south of Portugal, we find small settlements, designated by hills. These hills are made up of groups of houses in agglomerated settlements, they are places rich in immaterial patrimony such as legends, traditions, prayers, and ancestral knowledge that are at risk of being lost. Almost all the mountains are in an accelerated process of desertification, with only a few or a few inhabitants. They are places where we still find the preserved landscape, the authenticity of the people, the community experiences of sharing the oven, threshing floor, donkey, utensils and agricultural implements. They are spaces that can allow the sustainable tourism experience, valuing the elderly populations and their knowledge, reviving imaginary ones that manage to meet an idyllic image of the rural, which we still consider to exist in the most remote inland Algarve that we are studying. We will present a set of images of the material patrimony and its connection with intangible heritage. For example a community oven in the center of the hill that simultaneously is the place of worship of the village, for having on the wall of the oven itself a niche / oratory of Marian devotion.