The Twentieth Century Invention of Ancient Mountains: The Archaeology of Highland Aspromonte
2020
The high mountains of the Mediterranean are often considered as refuges of ancient
traditions, particularly of pastoralism and brigandage. Is this image true? This paper
reports the first systematic archaeological research on Aspromonte, Southern Calabria.
Archaeological, cartographic and air photo evidence suggests that people used the high
mountains in all periods from the Neolithic onwards. However, early usage was lowintensity and probably for special purposes such as iron-smelting, charcoal-burning and
logging; only in the Classical Greek period was there sustained effort at inhabiting higher
areas. The real development of the mountains came in the late-nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. From the 1920s onwards, there were large-scale, state-fostered projects for
economic exploitation of forests, political control of territory, and creation of a recreational landscape. These endeavors tied into modernist ideas of the state, as well as period
concepts such as Alpinism and healthy outdoor recreation for city dwellers. Ironically, as
soon as these modern efforts made the high mountains accessible, they were assigned a
chronotope, and were reimagined as the exemplification of an ancient way of life.
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