“Not only bread”. Considerations about unfinished visibility of protohistoric landscape

Abstract

Available iconographic sources, historical records, archaeological data, related to ancient landscape analysis, are just a selection of necessary knowledge, reducing the possibility of a partial and limited reconstruction of the past. In this paper three examples, illustrated by ethnographic documents, will be taken in consideration: cereal fields; portions of woodland progressively deforested to obtain building material, fuel and tools; high-altitude pastures. For each of them practices of management, transport, conservation and transformation will be documented with iconographic sources and analysed in their problematic aspects. The interdisciplinary approach and the comparison among ethnographic, historical, and archaeological records with examples from Northern Italy (both western and eastern regions, so different in settlement pattern and in agricultural practices), allow to widen the analysis of protohistorical data compared with the documentation of recent activities. In such a way a reconstruction of the landscape, notwithstanding partial, built by peasants will be offered.

Keywords

• bronze age
• etnography
• self-sufficiency
• peasant culture
• agricultural practices
• cheese production