Mountain Context Research Articles

Practici depoziţionale non-funerare La Tène târziu în sud-vestul României. Descoperirile de la Glogova şi Desa / Non-funerary depositional practices during the Late La Tène in southwestern Romania. The discoveries from Glogova and Desa

Practici depoziţionale non-funerare La Tène târziu în sud-vestul României. Descoperirile de la Glogova şi Desa / Non-funerary depositional practices during the Late La Tène in southwestern Romania. The discoveries from Glogova and Desa

Toxicity Abatement of Wastewaters from Tourism Units by Constructed Wetlands

The present research intended to investigate the toxicity abatement of domestic wastewater after passing a biosystem composed of a constructed wetland (CW) followed by a pond. The wastewater was generated in a tourism house in a rural and mountainous context and passed through a septic tank before being diverted to a CW followed by a pond. A battery of ecotoxicological tests, comprising microalgae (Raphidocelis subcapitata), macrophytes (Lemna minor), cladocerans (Daphnia magna), and bacteria (Aliivibrio fischeri), was used to assess the toxicity of the wastewater collected before and after the CW and the water of the pond. Physicochemical parameters (pH, conductivity, chemical oxygen demand, biochemical oxygen demand, total suspended solids, phosphates, ammonium, and nitrate) were also determined. The CW was able to remove carbon and nutrients from the water with a concomitant reduction of its toxicity. This study, reinforced the added value of using toxicity tests as a complement to CW operational monitoring to validate the solution and to analyze possible readjustments that may be required to improve efficiency. This study lends further support to the claim that CWs can be a sustainable solution for treating small volumes of domestic wastewater in a rural context.

STEM education in non-formal learning institutions in ethnic monority and mountainous areas: a look from Ha Giang city’s community learning centre

Community Learning Centre (CLC) is an non-formal learning institution working at grassroots level of the society. It derives from the initiative of UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) launched in 1988, as part of the Education for All Target Program in the Asia-Pacific region. The idea of building a lifelong learning society to promote the economy and appeal to participation of all social groups through education and the role of the CLC as a special autonomous community is the spirit and reason of CLCs’ existence [7]. In Vietnam, As of 2015 there have been more than 11,900 CLCs established in 10,600 communes and wards nationwide [4], working as informal and non-formal educational institutions in the commune level. STEM education has been a new trending method of teaching and learning in the last decades originated from US under the demands of educating and training new labour generations with expertise in practical knowledge and skills. STEM education can be in forms of formal and informal learning, in schools and in lifelong learning institutions. STEM education has been imported to Southeast Asian countries including Vietnam in the last recent years and become a trending word in educational discourse. In Vietnam, STEM education has been piloted in a few public schools of big cities of designed in international schools and private institutions of the nation. Yet it is a luxury educational product and strange in remote areas of Vietnam where most people are poor and live under disadvantaged conditions. While, CLCs as part of continuing educational institutions of the country have exited in all provinces, but struggling with the crisis of operation. In this context, there has been a model of CLC choosing STEM education as its main operating component and working with mostly children in informal ways such as supporting STEM clubs in local schools, running mobile STEM in villages and connecting STEM experts with local teachers. This is a groundbreaking pilot model in the ethnic and mountainous context, with close link between science - education - research and private sector participation with local government budget and government-led activities: Ha Giang City’s Community Learning Centre (HCLC) in Vietnam. It can probably be considered as a good example for other places to learn. The STEM education program of the HCLC is designed with the purpose of promoting formal and informal STEM education for ethnic minority students within the city. The three main aspects for changes after operating this STEM element are (1) improvement of learning environments and accessing to hands-on learning materials for children through a formal and informal science-integrated education system; (2) teachers’ and education managers’ professional development, and the enhancement of their provision of teaching learning material and through capacity building programs; And (3) opportunity of accessing better quality education for community, especially poor and ethnic minority children within remote suburbs of the city through free of charge enrollment for the community STEM program. In line with the content of the workshop, the following analysis focuses on the third aspec the STEM program that has been contributing to the improvement of better quality education for poor ethnic minority children in the 3 rural communes of Ha Giang city. This presentation will also provide some suggestions to the operation of STEM integrated education in CLCs or other community-based learning institutions in ethnic minority areas.

Estimating the Isotopic Altitude Gradient for Hydrogeological Studies in Mountainous Areas: Are the Low-Yield Springs Suitable? Insights from the Northern Apennines of Italy

Several prior studies investigated the use of stable isotopes of water in hydrogeological applications, most on a local scale and often involving the isotopic gradient (evaluated by exploiting the so-called altitude effect), calculated on the basis of rainwater isotopes. A few times, this gradient has been obtained using the stable isotopic contents of low-yield springs in a limited time series. Despite the fact that this method has been recognized by the hydrogeological community, marked differences have been observed with respect to the mean stable isotopes content of groundwater and rainwater. The present investigation compares the stable isotopic signatures of 23 low-yield springs discharging along two transects from the Tyrrhenian sea to the Po Plain of Italy, evaluates the different isotopic gradients and assesses their distribution in relation to some climatic and topographic conditions. Stable isotopes of water show that groundwater in the study area is recharged by precipitation and that the precipitation regime in the eastern portion of the study area is strongly controlled by a shadow effect caused by the Alps chain on the air masses from central Europe. Stable isotopes (in particular the δ18O and deuterium excess (d-excess) contents together with the obtained isotopic gradients) allow us to identify in the study area an opposite oriented orographic effect and a different provenance of the air masses. When the windward slope is located on the Tyrrhenian side, the precipitation shows a predominant oceanic origin; when the windward slope moves to the Adriatic side, the precipitation is characterized by a continental origin. The main results of this study confirm the usefulness of low-yield springs and the need for a highly detailed survey-scale hydrological investigation in the mountainous context.

Agritourism in Mountainous Regions—Insights from an International Perspective

Based on the research activity within the ISLE International Sustainability Network, this paper represents a step forward aiming to find some contacts points in the experiences some international cases (USA, Brazil, Italy and France) have grown in the development of agritourism in mountain contexts. Despite the singular differences and the national specificities, agritourism is generally considered a particular form of social innovation in agriculture and rural development of mountainous areas, aiming at recomposing the natural and the human dimensions within the framework of a new sustainable way of doing agriculture. At the basis of the research is the hypothesis that agritourism operations are slowly and gradually shifting towards a new perspective/model. Some years ago, agritourism was traditionally viewed as a way for farmers to integrate or diversify their incomes. Nowadays instead—as the diversity of practice has grown and new values have emerged—the range of farmers’ motivations has become much broader. Some of these motivations include not only economic issues but also social, environmental and cultural ones, while addressing a more comprehensive idea of community-based and sustainable development. Case studies from South Carolina (USA), from Italian mountain regions, from Santa Catarina State in Brazil and from France are illustrated in which different innovation perspectives are highlighted.

Progettare la «Stimmung». Dialogo tra Quintus Miller e Armando Ruinelli

The architects Quintus Miller and Armando Ruinelli operate mainly in Switzerland and in particular in the Grisons area where they have carried out several projects thus facing the different issues affecting the requalification of landscape and of existing architecture in the valley and mountain context. The dialogue between the two architects highlights their design approach in relation to the historical, cultural and environmental peculiarities of this heritage. What emerges strongly is the need for the contemporary project to reinterpret the existing in order to identify and restore in each project the «Stimmung» intended as an absolute synthesis of all those elements that characterize a given place or a given architecture in time and space. From the architectural redevelopment of small buildings to the insertion of new volumes within historical fabrics, from the restoration of monuments to the expansion of historic structures, the narrated projects show a well-read approach towards the intervention on heritage allowing a critical reinterpretation of history, of memory and of the long lasting Alpine settlement processes.

Secolarizzazione, memoria e nuovi revivals: la difficile riscrittura del presente

The architectural project of re-use, in a context full of historical, cultural and environmental values ​​such as the Alpine one, must inevitably confront with the list of conceptualizations elaborated during the twentieth-century modernity. First of all we have to think about memory which is the main raw material of architecture and its history, a theme on which the culture of restoration has been built, and on which the rhetoric of re-use has been shaped in recent times, with the gradual addition of other contemporaneity values such as soil consumption, sustainability, zero growth. The theme of memory seems in some cases to negotiate the one of secularization, a term that often comes to coincide with modernity. The modernity that has standardized and flattened the Alpine territory, raising questions about the meaning of the “encounter”, its ability to question prejudices, beliefs, and consolidated rhetorics. The “encounter” that takes place in the moment in which the contemporary urban culture succeeds in crossing landscape and Alpine architecture issues, creating disorientation, reopening the eyes of the observer and rebooting history by questioning the present. The “rewriting of the existent” therefore raises issues that are difficult to make explicit, such as the recognition and critical knowledge that are the basis of design responsibility. This is accompanied by the threat caused by a prescriptive approach which, in light of the aspects of control and of technological and environmental management of the mountain context, can lead to the drift of the practice which must be avoided only through the assumption of risk linked to the design itself.

Quantifying bed‐related suspended load in gravel bed rivers through an analysis of the bedload‐suspended load relationship

AbstractSuspended load transport can strongly impact ecosystems, dam filling and water resources. However, contrary to bedload, the use of physically based predicting equations is very challenging because of the complexity of interactions between suspended load and the river system. Through the analysis of extensive data sets, we investigated extent to which one or several river bed or flow parameters could be used as a proxy for quantifying suspended fluxes in gravel bed rivers. For this purpose, we gathered in the literature nearly 2400 instantaneous field measurements collected in 56 gravel bed rivers. Among all standard dimensionless parameters tested, the strongest correlation was observed between the suspended sediment concentration and the dimensionless bedload rate. An empirical relation between these two parameters was calibrated. Used with a reach average bedload transport formula, the approach allowed to successfully reproduce suspended fluxes measured during major flood events in seven gravel bed alpine rivers, morphodynamically active and distant from hillslope sources. These results are discussed in light of the complexity of the processes potentially influencing suspended load in a mountainous context. The approach proposed in this paper will never replace direct field measurements, which can be considered the only confident method to assess sediment fluxes in alpine streams; however, it can increment existing panel tools that help river managers to estimate even rough but not unrealistic suspended fluxes when measurements are totally absent. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Replacement or displacement? Periurbanisation and changing water access in the Kumaon Himalaya, India

This paper describes the impacts of urbanisation on the water sources of the residents of Mukteshwar in the Kumaon hills of North India. It uses a periurban conceptual lens to understand the changing flows of people and natural resources between Mukteshwar and connecting urban centres. Following land use change, it traces the impacts of these processes on water sources and institutions, and employs a political ecology framing to illustrate how water resources are (re) appropriated. Further demonstrating how the effects of these changes are aggravated by climatic change and variability it describes how these processes impact gender relations around natural resource collection. The paper concludes with identifying some key areas for further research on periurbanisation processes in mountain contexts, focusing on important ideas and concepts that can be relevant in capturing the processes underway.

The “Metropolitan City” in Italy: New Spaces for Dialogue and Interaction Between the City and the Mountain

The mountain areas live a period of new dynamism, in which the connection with the urban context has an important role in terms of cultural redesign of values, physical and functional connections with the local areas and creation of urban-mountain interactions. The article focuses on Italian mountain system, comprising experimentation and excellence, but even rupture and depopulation perspectives, in which the city and mountain are no longer simply the borders of an entre-deux (“between two”, Bourdeau 2015) relationship.The article taking into consideration the current direction of Metropolitan Cities, the newborn institutions established as an intermediate level in local governance. The new Metropolitan Cities were officially born in 2014, following the approval of Law n° 56 “Disposizioni sulle citta metropolitane, sulle province, sulle unioni e fusioni di comuni” (Provisions concerning metropolitan cities, provinces, and unions/fusions between townships). Metropolitan Cities are defined as wide-scale local entities and they are institutional body with task of planning and local development government, in many cases regarding urban and mountain territories.The article proposes a wide range of situations in which forms of strategic planning for the systemization of city-mountain relationships has been adopted. At first level, it has been considered Strategic plans that give formal indication about the exchange between urban and mountain areas. Three significant cases: the Piano Strategico della citta e del territorio di Cuneo 2020 (2020 Strategic plan for the city of Cuneo and its surroundings mountain areas); the Piano Strategico territoriale della Provincia di Belluno (Strategic plan for the mountain-urban area of Belluno); and the Piano Strategico Metropolitano di Bologna 2020 (2020 Strategic plan for the metropolitan city of Bologna and its surroundings mountain area ).At second level the analysis regards the initiatives carried out by the Aosta Valley region (the Strategic Plan for Aosta) and the experience of the “Piano Strategico dei Comuni dell’Alto Canavese” (Strategic Plan for the townships in the Alpine upper Canavese area, within the Metropolitan City of Turin). Wide areas in which the actors have experimented a strategic planning in order to create strong interactions between urban and mountain context through a process of local governance.The results of the analysis permit to highlight some issues: the definition of mutual benefit between city and mountain context; the construction of a strategic polycentric vision inside the urban-mountain territories; concerns inter-territoriality as a tool to build metropolitan identity.

The contribution of broadscale and finescale habitat structure to the distribution and diversity of birds in an Alpine forest-shrub ecotone

In a mountain context, the forest-shrub ecotone is an area of high biodiversity. Relatively little is known about the habitat requirements of birds in this habitat, yet it is facing potential threats from changes in grazing practices and climate change. Moreover, it is not clear at which scale habitat associations should be assessed in Alpine birds. Further information on key habitat components affecting bird communities of the ecotone is needed in order to inform management strategies to counteract potential habitat loss, and to better inform predictions of how bird communities may be affected by future environmental change. Data on bird occurrence and broadscale (land cover) and finescale (vegetation structure and shrub species composition) habitat variables were collected in an Alpine forest-shrub ecotone in Val Troncea (northwestern Italian Alps) in order to address two objectives: to identify the key habitat variables associated with the occurrence of individual species and with the diversity of the bird community; and, to assess which scale of habitat measurement (broadscale, finescale or both combined) is needed to model bird occurrence. Broadscale variables, or combinations of broadscale and finescale variables, tended to have the best performing models. When combined models performed best, shrub species identity was included in many cases. Shrubs also played an important role in explaining variations in species diversity and richness. Vegetation structure was of relatively little importance, either for individual bird species or for species richness and diversity. These findings suggest that management should strive to maintain a mosaic of habitats whilst minimizing forest encroachment, which could be achieved through targeted grazing. Broadscale habitat data and data on shrub species composition should provide a sufficient basis for identifying relevant species-specific habitat parameters in a mountain environment in order to model future scenarios of effects of habitat change on the bird community of the alpine forest-shrub ecotone.

Sustainability and Mountain Tourism: The Millennial’s Perspective

Evidence from several studies illustrates the different points of view through which sustainability and mountains have been studied over the years. Nowadays, interest in Millennials is increasing but no research has compared Millennials and sustainability in the mountain context. This study aims at defining sustainability with reference to Millennial perception of both winter and summer mountain sports. By analysing data gathered from a sample of 2292 Millennials (Piedmont area), the authors confirm their high degree of sensitivity towards sustainable issues and, above all, discover that there are differences in the sustainable perception Millennials have of both mountain winter and summer sports. More specifically, Millennial perception is deeply influenced by the place where they are used to living―mountains or cities―and by their gender. From a managerial point of view, results have direct implications on the administrators of mountain institutions who can implement appropriate initiatives in order to correctly sensitise Millennials towards mountain sports. Moreover, from a theoretical perspective, the study opens a new scenario on two important topics linked to sustainability, namely Millennials and mountain sports.

Impact of Apiculture on the Household Income of Rural Poor in Mountains of Chitral District in Pakistan

Livelihoods of communities living in mountain areas is typically dependent on subsistence agriculture and smallholder farming. The needs of smallholder rural mountain farmers for livelihoods cannot be addressed without providing them alternative income within available resources. Beekeeping has proven to be such an alternative livelihood option with potential of providing alternative income security to smallholder farmers living in rural mountain areas.However, how successful and sustainable beekeeping interventions are in terms of presenting a reliable alternative livelihood option particularly in rural mountain context of Pakistan is less explored. In this context, an impact assessment approach has been used in an ex-post scenario to better understand impacts attributable to an intervention.Applying such approaches in ex-post scenarios help better understand relevance, effectiveness, and suitability and sustainability aspects of interventions. This paper assesses impact of beekeeping pilot intervention on the household income of rural poor living in mountain areas of Pakistan and looks into suitability and sustainability aspects of the intervention in the ex-post scenario. Using ‘Difference-in-Difference’ approach, impact and sustainability of pilot intervention was assessed 4 years after conclusionof the intervention. Findings of the study suggest that average income of beneficiary households from beekeeping is increased by51.54% compared to the average income of beneficiary households assessed at the end of the pilot intervention. Study concludes that interventions on strengthening alternative income security optionsin rural mountain context are sustainable given that the alternative livelihood options are carefully identified and implemented in a participatory manner.

Recent growth changes in Western European forests are driven by climate warming and structured across tree species climatic habitats

Recent growth changes (1980–2007) in Western European forests strongly vary across tree species, and range from +42% in mountain contexts to −17% in Mediterranean contexts. These changes reveal recent climate warming footprint and are structured by species' temperature (−) and precipitation (+) growing conditions. Unprecedented climate warming impacts forests extensively, questioning the respective roles of climatic habitats and tree species in forest growth responses. National forest inventories ensure a repeated and spatially systematic monitoring of forests and form a unique contributing data source. A primary aim of this paper was to estimate recent growth changes in eight major European tree species, in natural contexts ranging from mountain to Mediterranean. A second aim was to explore their association with species’ climatic habitat and contemporary climate change. Using >315,000 tree increments measured in >25,000 NFI plots, temporal changes in stand basal area increment (BAI) were modelled. Indicators of climate normals and of recent climatic change were correlated to species BAI changes. BAI changes spanned from −17 to +42% over 1980–2007 across species. BAI strongly increased for mountain species, showed moderate/no increase for generalist and temperate lowland species and declined for Mediterranean species. BAI changes were greater in colder/wetter contexts than in warmer/drier ones where declines were observed. This suggested a role for climate warming, further found more intense in colder contexts and strongly correlated with species BAI changes. The predominant role of climate warming and species climatic habitat in recent growth changes is highlighted in Western Europe. Concern is raised for Mediterranean species, showing growth decreases in a warmer climate with stable precipitation.

Lithic resource management in mountain environments: The Andean sector of Tierra Del Fuego

Lithic resource management is one of the most important variables for the analysis of technological organization in hunter-gatherer societies. As essential resources for the manufacturing of tools that are themselves involved in processing and consumption of other types of resources, lithic raw materials constitute the starting point of all production processes. Although well studied in different environments, lithic resource management is difficult to analyze in mountain contexts, especially due to problems of site formation and archaeological visibility. In this paper, we present the research strategies adopted in order to study lithic resource management in mountains and piedmont areas in the Andean sector of Tierra del Fuego.We carried out a program of systematic surveys in different landscapes according to the methodology of distributional analysis and considering two different perspectives: location and characterization of raw material sources, and evaluation of land occupation by hunter-gatherer societies. Lithic materials were studied following a techno-functional perspective that includes the interrelated study of technology (raw materials and manufacturing techniques) and use wear (microscopic analysis). Then, results were confronted with those of excavated sites, which are located in different landscapes and landscape units and have different functionalities, such as campsites, ceremonial sites, etc. The results obtained confirm that local materials from secondary sources were the most used, although there are also some allochtonous good quality rocks, coming from sources located at different distances.This research let us adjust field methods for surveys in wooded mountain environments, as well as discuss some more general aspects regarding the exploitation of lithic resources in mountain regions. These landscapes may seem, at a first glance, as ideal provision places for hunter-gatherers because of abundance of lithic materials. However, these are not always available in terms of visibility and accessibility; on the other hand, not all rocks can be used for the manufacture of all types of tools. We can then propose that hunter-gatherer societies that highly depend on lithic resources seek to exploit outcrops where visibility and accessibility are high, but that also search for a variety of raw materials with different characteristics that allow manufacturing of different artifacts. From these data, it is possible to discuss mobility, seasonality and interaction of hunter-gatherer groups.

The Acheulean in the South Caucasus (Georgia): Koudaro I and Tsona lithic assemblages

The Southern Caucasus/Transcaucasia was occupied by human groups throughout the Pleistocene from 1.8 Ma (Dmanisi). A long chronological gap currently separates this earliest assemblage from the first evidence of (Acheulean-type) bifacial technology, as assemblages with bifaces do not seem to be older than 500 ka. Acheulean sites are frequent on the southern edge of the Great Caucasus but are absent on the northern side. Most of these are badly or non-dated open-air sites. There are, however, three cave sites in Georgia with archaeological sequences comprising lithic assemblages related to the Acheulean: Koudaro I, III and Tsona, located on the Great Caucasus. The altitude of these sites ranges from 1500 to 2200 m (a.s.l.) indicating occupations in a high mountainous context. Following a new technological analysis of the lithic series, this paper focuses on the assemblages from Koudaro I and Tsona and describes the strategies implemented for core and bifacial technologies in relation to palaeoenvironmental data and raw material procurement. Koudaro I indicates that both debitage and shaping took place in the cave, whereas only various heavy-duty tools were brought to Tsona, probably for short-term and specialized occupations. Acheulean groups occupied high altitudes during temperate periods and raw material procurement suggests hominin mobility between the low plateaus and the Caucasian valleys. The sites suggest that Acheulean groups extended their available territories into the Great Caucasus when climatic conditions were propitious. Moreover, comparisons between Levantine and Georgian series suggest that the southern flanks of the Great Caucasus mountain range gave rise to a local evolution of Acheulean features after the arrivals of hominin groups with the bifacial technology, likely from the Levant.

Using carbon finance to support climate policy objectives in high mountain ecosystems

Carbon markets and climate finance payments are being used to incentivize the mitigation of CO2 arising from anthropogenic land-use change in forests, marine ecosystems, and lowland grasslands. However, no such consideration has been given to how these ‘carbon finance incentives’ might be applied to mountain grasslands and shrublands, ecosystems that contain a substantial amount of carbon. These incentives amount to more than US$350 billion per annum and could potentially support underfunded natural resource management (NRM) activities, which are urgently needed to address numerous stressors impacting these important ecosystems. In the mountain context, NRM activities could include adaptive grazing management, sustainable cropping, ecosystem preservation, ecosystem restoration, and engineered soil conservation measures. This article investigates the stressors, challenges, and priorities related to the NRM of carbon stocks in mountain grasslands and shrublands; why carbon markets and climate finance have not yet been utilized in this context; and, what is required to position mountain-based NRM activities as eligible for carbon finance incentives. Using surveys and interviews triangulated with a systematic literature review, the study found that carbon finance incentives are not well understood, both amongst mountain-focused experts and in the literature. The study also found the required technical methodologies, policy frameworks, and data to be largely undeveloped. This article proposes a top-down conceptual policy framework that can be used to develop key ‘enabling factors’ with the view of extending the eligibility of carbon markets and climate finance to NRM activities undertaken in mountain grasslands and shrublands in the same way that has been afforded to other ecosystems.Policy relevanceThis is the first study to explicitly highlight the important role that the mountain grasslands and shrublands might play in international climate policy, and how carbon finance mechanisms might support better NRM in these areas. It is also the first to investigate why these incentives have not been adopted thus far. The article concludes by proposing a novel top-down ‘carbon incentive enabling’ framework that could be driven by governments and mountain development focused organizations so as to capture some of the opportunities offered by carbon-based incentives, and help meet international climate policy objectives.

Mountain Cooperatives in Slovakia

One third of Slovakia is covered by mountain range where cooperatives are the main agricultural actors. These collective farms were created within the frame of the former administered economy and have survived its break up. The specific temporality of the collectivization in mountain and the structure of local communities are important factors in the stages of change. The paper aims at estimating the effects of the mountain context in the restructuring of the cooperatives and gives a typology of the current forms of cooperatives in mountain areas.

New Family Farmers for Abandoned Lands

Degraded terraced landscapes are one of the most characteristic “landscapes of abandonment” in the European mountains. Especially in the last few decades, increasingly terraces have been losing their functionality, undermining the stability of slopes. Public initiatives and scientific surveys focusing on such landscapes have recently increased, but the problems of maintaining and managing abandoned areas are still acute. A project promoting adoption of abandoned terraces, which began in 2010 in the Brenta Valley in the Veneto region, Italy, is a small but interesting attempt to revitalize a traditional landscape through new forms of social management. The success of this initiative provides an opportunity to reflect on new forms of family farming in periurban European mountain contexts that retain some characteristics of Alpine culture—generating new forms of community and solidarity, farming practices oriented toward multifunctionality, and relations marked by multiscalarity. These practices involving new family farmers differ from both traditional productive farming and modern market-based economy. However, in order to improve and expand, such new family farming will require innovative forms of governance and partnership between city and mountain residents, going beyond the tourism- and conservation-based models of the 20th century.

Plant economy and territory exploitation in the Alps during the Neolithic (5000–4200 cal bc): first results of archaeobotanical studies in the Valais (Switzerland)

This paper presents the archaeobotanical study of several Neolithic settlements located in the Valais, the upper part of the Rhone Valley, in Switzerland. The archaeological sites are dated between 5000 and 4200 cal bc, which corresponds to the Early and the Middle Neolithic. Most of the sites are situated around 500–600 m, overhanging the alluvial plain of the Rhone. First results of the macroremains analysis show that cereals, comprising mainly naked wheat (Triticum aestivum s.l./durum/turgidum) and barley (Hordeum distichum/vulgare), are predominant. In addition, pea (Pisum sativum) and opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) are recorded. Gathered plants are sparse, and this from the first establishment of farmers around 5000 cal bc. If we compare the obtained results with data from the Northern French Alps, not far from the Valais, we get a completely different picture of the Neolithic plant economy. In the northern French Alps the communities exploited all vegetation levels from the collinean to the subalpine belt, gathered plants playing an important role alongside the cultivated species. Our first results are giving a new insight into the first agro-pastoral communities in the Swiss Alps; they are allowing us to understand how plant resources were exploited in a mountainous context and to outline the catchment area of the settlements.