Managing Forests in the 19th and Early 20th Century Bovese

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The town of Bova, located in the foothills of the Aspromonte in the province of Reggio Calabria, Italy, once dominated a region rich in forests and woods. Travelers from the 15th – 19th centuries commented upon the rich vegetation. Archival records ranging from tax declarations to legal disputes refer to the presence of trees and forests in locations around the town of Bova. Many of these areas are no longer forested. In this exploration of the tax data and legal disputes over the use of these resources, references to forested areas and to the tending of trees such as oaks and chestnuts are mapped in order to begin analyzing the possible ways in which citizens interacted with these resources. Forests were often used to demarcate limits of neighborhoods as well as for their intrinsic resources, and some were owned or managed by the church or the municipality. Here, an attempt is made to use spatial analysis to better understand these relationships within the Bovan economy of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23935