Mobility in the Mountains: Late Third and Second Millennia Alpine Societies' Engagements with the High-Altitude Zones in the Southern French Alps

Tracking long-term human impacts on landscape, vegetal biodiversity and water quality in the Lake Aydat catchment (Auvergne, France) using pollen, non-pollen palynomorphs and diatom assemblages

“…This suggests, that towards the end of the Neolithic, the southern Chaîne des Puys was probably characterised by sporadic, rather than systematic, or permanent occupation. This model of occupation, characterised by a high spatial variability, is consistent with the high mobility observed in 3rd and 2nd millennia societies at different spatial scales in mountain areas (Walsh and Mocci, 2011). Agriculture seems to persist but appears to concern only the lower altitude areas.…”

“…Walsh and Mocci, 2011;Palet et al, 2012;Rendu et al, 2013). Previous archaeological investigations are scarce with the majority undertaken at the end of the 19th century, or during the first half of the 20th century (e.g.…”

Prehistoric landscapes of the Dolomites: Survey data from the highland territory of Cadore (Belluno Dolomites, Northern Italy)

“…Despite the 3rd and mainly the 2nd millennia BC are widely recognized in the Alps (and especially in the Eastern Alps) as a period of increasing human occupation of the uplands (Mottes and Nicolis, 2002;Marzatico, 2007;Walsh and Mocci, 2011), in the study area only the site of Mondeval de Sora e VF1 has yielded artefacts that can be attributed to this time span. Considering the abundance of Bronze Age sites in the neighbouring Trentino province (Marzatico, 2007) and in other areas of the Belluno province (Leonardi, 2004), it is quite likely that this gap depends mainly on a research bias.…”

Constraining the Deforestation History of Europe: Evaluation of Historical Land Use Scenarios with Pollen-Based Land Cover Reconstructions

“…REVEALS estimates that these mountainous areas were 70-90% open land during these last two preindustrial periods. Land is deemed as being too cold for agriculture using the KK10 methodology, even though transhumant pastoralism has been common in these areas since at least the Bronze Age [67]. HYDE did not distribute land use in the Alpine region likely for the same reasons as in KK10 and also because HYDE concentrates land use in areas with low slope.…”