Occupazione pastorale delle alte quote alpine nell'età del Bronzo : primi dati dal sito MZ051S (Camp da Ortisé, Val di Sole, Trento)

Available data on human occupation of mountain areas in late Prehistory are still rather scarce. Despite the growing archaeological interest for the uplands, few upland archaeological sites have been investigated in the Alps. In this paper a new Bronze Age site from Val di Sole (Trentino, Italy) is presented. The site, a large dry-stone enclosure named MZ051S, has been investigated as part of the ALPES project (Alpine Landscapes: Pastoralism and Environment of Val di Sole). MZ051S is located in Val Poré, on a glacial plateau at 2240 metres of elevation. The excavations carried out between 2015 and 2019 uncovered a modest and poorly characterised archaeological assemblage, which includes lithic artefacts and potsherds. Scientific analyses provided significant multidisciplinary data on the site stratigraphy, chronology and formation, on its geographical and environmental context and on the characteristics of sediments and soils in the area.

These new data contributed to inferring the evolution of this Alpine landscape, the dynamics of human occupation of the uplands of Val di Sole in the last 4000 years and the human impact on the vulnerable local environment, which preserves glacial and periglacial morphologies. Preliminary reconstructions suggest a first human occupation, related to the pastoral use of the valley, during the Early Bronze Age, followed by a more ephemeral presence in the Middle Bronze Age and the Iron Age. Evidence of human activities during the Medieval and Modern period, identified in other sites of the valley, has not been recorded at MZ051S. Geoarchaeological and palaeobotanical data seem to suggest the establishment of practices that led to the acceleration of soil-erosion processes during the Bronze Age and the subsequent degradation of soils in the area.

The data derived from the investigation of MZ051S, albeit preliminary, are crucial to understand the processes of exploitation of the uplands in late Prehistory in the central-eastern Alps and to infer the complex interactions between anthropic and natural factors in mountain environments. [Publisher's text]