The 20th Century Archaeology of the High Mountains: State Projects and the Forces Resisting Them

Summary

The mountains of southern Calabria above 1400 m were used throughout prehistory and history, but except for an attempt to found highland agricultural settlements in the Greek period, they were always used for special purposes rather than as primary centres of habitation. The 20th century saw a massive transformation in land use, with intensive state investment in creating new kinds of mountain landscapes dedicated to special purposes. These purposes included political control, economic exploitation, and the invention of recreational worlds for use by urban dwellers (trekking, skiing, and more recently heritage landscapes). More populist initiatives included the development of religious landscapes of pilgrimage to local shrines, and ongoing bottom-up, informal exploitation of mountain places and resources. Archaeologically, some of these efforts proved successful (notably reforestation, creating a road network, and creating recreational landscapes). Others have proved less so, foundering upon long-term political and structural problems to create a landscape littered with the relics of a wide range of short-lived development projects.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 19904