Reacting to the Powers that Be: Investigations of a Calabrian, Post-Medieval Community

Abstract

The town of Bova (Calabria, Italy) is a post-medieval montane community that remained inaccessible well into the twentieth century. Archival research, field survey, and spatial analyses provide a foundation for investigating the effects of social and political restructuring on the economic and social development of the community. Attitudes of laxness, disinterest, or ignorance have been attributed to inhabitants of this region. They can be interpreted as projected upon the citizens of Bova and others in southern Calabria by those in more urban centers to the north. Potentially, they reflect preferred survival strategies in the face of shifting imperial control.

The Twentieth Century Invention of Ancient Mountains: The Archaeology of Highland Aspromonte

“…In the lowlands, settlement appears to gradually spread out more widely around centers, with more outlying sites and greater use of the coastline itself. Melito, the first town on the Ionian coast, is an eighteenth century foundation, there are a few eighteenth century houses and agricultural installations in Bova Marina, and catastal records indicate increasing use of lower foothills (Lazrus 2014). A similar trend toward broader landscape use appears in the high mountain survey data (see Fig.…”

Land Use and Social Dynamics in Early 19th Century Bova, Calabria

“…Bova is located in the southern foothills of the Aspromonte, the mountainous southern tip of the Italian peninsula in the region then called Calabria Ultra. Difficult to reach over land and without a deep harbor, Bova was situated on the margins of the Kingdom of Naples; it was a small but rather stubborn and independent community [6].…”

“…The town sits on a hilltop at 915 masl overlooking a series of ridges and valleys that extend southwards to the sea and across inland plateaus to the north that stretch deeper into the heart of the Aspromonte (Figure 1). The town, once the feudal property of the archbishop of Reggio, and a bishopric in its own right, was a small but important community in an area poorly integrated into the larger economy because of the lack of investment by the government in Naples with larger political issues on its mind, and the community's own desire to be left alone by those same forces [6]. This tension led to a small-scale, localized focus on landholdings without the implementation of intensive strategies to increase production.…”