Peripheral Mountain Research Articles

Ambiguous and Complex – Rural Revival in a Peripheral Mountain Region (SW Poland)

AbstractThe general development conditions of rural areas have been addressed by many authors; however, the conditions and factors that allow the depopulated problem rural areas to re‐enter the development path are an understudied phenomenon. This article examines the types and drivers of rural revival, evaluates the transformations of rural areas and forecasts their future development. It focuses on a representative region for the key transformations of mountainous rural areas in the Polish‐Czech borderland. This study offers a complex, interdisciplinary approach using quantitative and qualitative methods to examine the in‐depth mechanisms of rural transformation and to vocalise local knowledge and inhabitants' perceptions. The results demonstrate that the depopulated and marginalised peripheral rural regions have the potential to return to the development path, but the symptoms, drivers and perceptions of rural transformations vary greatly across the region. The study highlights the complexity and ambiguity of assessing, evaluating and forecasting rural transformations.

Makeshift activism and the afterlives of refugee welcome in Covid-19 Italy

This article captures a shift occurring at the peripheries of the Italian asylum system where, as reception infrastructures are progressively gutted, dismantled, and transformed into security apparatuses, local organizations refocus their efforts on helping refugees and asylum seekers carve out spaces of agency and autonomy in the time-space after institutional reception. I introduce the concept of “makeshift activism” to describe this relentless, creative patching together of solutions to support migrant emplacement beyond and – sometimes – against the confines of official programs. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in one of the world’s first Covid-19 hotspots – Italy’s Veneto region, I take the pandemic as a magnifying glass to expose the precarious nature of this activism but also its potential for prefiguring alternatives to the state’s (non-existent) paths towards long-term inclusion. More broadly, I shift the anthropological gaze towards charting the afterlives and aftermaths of refugee “welcome” in less spectacular locales, such as mid-size cities and small municipalities in peripheral mountain regions.

Alpine blooming of “snow fleas”: the importance of snow for Alpine springtails (Hexapoda: Collembola) ecology and biodiversity

Springtails can occur in large populations on the snow surface. This peculiar habitat hosts specialized winter-active springtails living in colonies and using this seasonal habitat for feeding, effective dispersal and migration. Snow-active species have never been studied in Southern European Alps: the aim of this work is to study snow-active springtails of Adamello-Brenta Nature Park (“PNAB”; Italy), a peripheral mountain range of relevant biogeographic interest using integrative taxonomy. Springtail “bloomings” were sampled for 17 months by an environmental assistant of the park. Nine assemblages of springtails were found when temperatures were higher than 0 °C; eight were monospecific, with a total of five species found. The snow-active springtail fauna found includes both common Central-Northern European nival species like Desoria hiemalis (first record for Italy, although genetically differentiated from Northern Alps populations), Ceratophysella sigillata (known in Italy mainly from caves) and three species likely new to science (Hypogastrura cf. kelmendica sp1, Hypogastrura cf. kelmendica sp2, H. cf. peloponnesica, all belonging to the Hypogastrura socialisgroup). Snow is an important ephemeral habitat for springtails, for the biodiversity hosted and for its importance as an ecological corridor. We could hypothesize that snow, especially in peripheral mountain chains, acts as a fragmentary ephemeral habitat for those cold-adapted springtails. This could constitute a relevant aspect to take into consideration for conservation biology, especially in the context of the ongoing climate change. On the other hand, the Alpine chain probably acts as an ecological barrier for nival species, since isolated species and populations were found in PNAB.Graphical

Glacial history of Saxifragawahlenbergii (Saxifragaceae) in the context of refugial areas in the Western Carpathians.

Despite the wealth of data available for mountain phylogeography, local-scale studies focused on narrow endemic species remain rare. Yet, knowledge of the genetic structure of such species biogeographically linked to a restricted area is of particular importance to understand the history of the local flora and its diversity patterns. Here, we aim to contribute to the phylogeographical overview of the Western Carpathians with a genetic study of Saxifragawahlenbergii, one of the most characteristic endemic species of this region. We sampled populations from all discrete parts of the species' distribution range to apply sequencing of selected non-coding cpDNA and nuclear ribosomal DNA (ITS) regions, as well as Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism (AFLP) fingerprinting. First, while ITS sequences showed weak diversification, the genetic structure based on cpDNA sequences revealed two well-differentiated groups of haplotypes. One of them is restricted to the main center of the distribution range in the Tatra Mountains (Mts), while the second group included a series of closely related haplotypes, which in most cases were unique for particular isolated groups of populations in peripheral mountain ranges and in the south-eastern part of the Tatra Mts. AFLP fingerprinting also revealed a pattern of divergence among populations, while only partly corroborating the division observed in cpDNA. Taking into account all the data, the pattern of genetic structure, supported by the high levels of unique genetic markers in populations, may reflect the historical isolation of populations in several local refugia during the last glacial period. Not only the center of the range in the Tatra Mts, but also other, neighboring massifs (Malá Fatra, Nízke Tatry, Chočské vrchy, Muránska planina), where populations are characterized by separate plastid DNA haplotypes, could have acted as separate refugia.

Habitat maintenance assessment and mapping as priority ecosystem service in mountain protected areas

Habitat maintenance as an ecosystem service (ES) is essential for the protection of natural capital, however, it is among the most challenging services for definition and evaluation. The present study is focused on assessing and mapping habitat maintenance ecosystem service in Rila and Pirin Mountains in Bulgaria for strategic planning purposes by better understanding the link between the potential of providing this ecosystem service and biodiversity in five protected areas (PAs). An integrated approach for the assessment of the condition of ecosystems in PAs and their potential to provide ecosystem services was applied and further developed in the present study. The results showed that the conservation regime allowed the territories to preserve a high degree of naturalness in a very good ecological condition – 96477 ha (73%) of the total case-study area, and 33078 ha (77%) of the target PAs, respectively. The potential of ecosystems to provide habitat maintenance ES is high to very high for 84% of the total studied area (81258.9 ha) and for 96.4% (31906 ha) of the area of the target PAs. A current assessment and mapping show the role of protected areas as spatial natural capital assets that purposefully and actively support their prioritized habitat maintenance functions as spatial guarantors for the sustenance of rich packages of material, regulating, and cultural functions in significant geographic areas. The results demonstrate the importance of protected site management in mountain areas in ensuring sustainable cooperation and consumption of ecosystem services in peripheral mountain communities of the European Union highly dependent on available natural capital.

Between plaza and peak: a montological perspective on verticality and urbanization in highland Peru

Under the influence of concentrated and extended urbanization, Andean cities and the different altitudinal zones of their “hinterlands” are experiencing profound changes in land cover — from the central plazas up to the highest peaks. The complex regional-geographic characteristics of these socioecological systems, such as the vertical complementarity of land use, require a montological perspective on verticality and urbanization: it transcends disciplinary approaches and can be crucial to properly interpret the trajectories of land cover change and formulate hypotheses for future practice-oriented research. Which trajectories of land cover change characterized altitudinal zones of Andean cities and their surroundings over the last three decades? Are there similarities that allow for the formulation of more general hypotheses? Using the Peruvian cases of Cusco and Huaraz, and combining a traditional altitudinal zonation model of land use in Peru with direct field observations and GIS-based analyses of remotely sensed data from 1991, 2001, 2011, and 2021, this study identifies the main trajectories of land cover change in the Quechua (>2300–3500 m), Suni (>3500–4000 m), and Puna (>4000–4800 m) regions — and finds insightful similarities between Cusco and Huaraz: (1) an impressive area of built-up land substitutes grassland in the Quechua, which, following regional altitudinal zonation models, is characterized by irrigated and rain-fed cropland; (2) an unexpected expansion of irrigated cropland takes place in the Suni, which, in theory, often lacks irrigation infrastructure and is mostly used for rain-fed tuber cultivation; and (3) a clear change from “other land” to grassland occurs in the Puna — where grassland is thought to predominate, anyway, since pre-Hispanic times. Hypothesizing that these changes reflect the interplay between speculative fallow, agricultural intensification, and ecological restoration, the results can be read as vertically complementary, local manifestations of concentrated and extended urbanization in a formerly peripheral mountain region of the Global South — and they underscore the need to overcome mental city-mountain dichotomies for a socially inclusive and ecologically balanced Andean development between plaza and peak.

Phylogeographic pattern of the high-alpine plant species Eritrichium nanum (Boraginaceae) within the Carpathians

The Carpathians represent not only a European hotspot of plant diversity for both species richness and endemism, but also an important stepping-stone area in historical migrations between the flora of the Asian and European mountain systems and a starting point of postglacial recolonizations for many species. Yet, until recent years, phylogeographical studies for alpine or arctic-alpine plants were focused on the Alps, whereas peripheral mountain ranges, including the Carpathians, were either neglected or insufficiently sampled. In this study, we aimed to complement the Alpine phylogeographic structure of an emblematic high-alpine European endemic taxon, Eritrichium nanum, by focusing on the Carpathian range of the species. We sampled nine populations from the South-Eastern Carpathians and performed ITS1 sequencing and AFLP fingerprinting. In case of ITS1 region, all the populations, no matter of their geographic origin, presented the same ribotype. The AFLP analysis indicated that, within the Carpathians, the extant populations of E. nanum comprised two major allopatric lineages. One important result of the research was the discovery that the species’ sole important genetic break was located in the Southern Carpathians, separating populations of the Retezat Mountains from all the others in the Carpathians.

Change agency in social innovation: an analysis of activities in social innovation processes

ABSTRACT We examine the role of change agency in social innovations. Agency in social innovations can create new resources and capacities for transformative change in a region. To date, there is a lack of empirical studies investigating how agency manifests itself in social innovations. In particular, research has not yet investigated the detailed activities of social innovation actors throughout the phases of social innovation processes. In this paper we apply the concept of trinity of change agency to investigate the activities of social innovation actors. Using innovation biographies and data from 61 interviews for 11 case studies of social innovation in a peripheral mountain region in Switzerland, we analyse the social innovation process from an actor-oriented perspective. Our findings show that the various types of change agency are highly present in social innovations. The significance of change agency alters throughout the innovation process. Our analysis shows that all kinds of actors performed change agency during the social innovation process. Interestingly, same actors performed different types of change agency during the social innovation process. The findings suggest that change agency is as a significant element in social innovations and that we need to consider it as a transformative element of social innovation processes. When policymakers take change agency into account in creating an environment in which social innovations can flourish, there is a great chance that social innovations can contribute to changing regional development paths and perhaps even to regional transformation.

Analysing digital multilocality between urban centres and rural peripheries: Combining and integrating digital and analogue research methods

The application of mixed methods in researching digitalisation and rural development has numerous benefits in terms of the integration of various data sources. In this paper, we present a novel, mixed methods approach that combines digital and analogue methods. We investigate multilocal work arrangements of knowledge workers in Switzerland who mainly work in a central urban area but occasionally withdraw to peripheral mountain regions in order to conduct their work in a concentrated and undisturbed environment. To analyse such multilocal work arrangements, we use a mixed methods approach that incorporates six integrated methods: geotracking, laptop and smartphone tracking, self-administered digital diaries, ethnographic walk-along observations and qualitative semi-structured interviews. Our study illustrates that mixed methods in digitalisation research provide in-depth insights, but that they also have limitations. Furthermore, we show how ethical standards can and should be used to create a basis of trust with the study participants and how this affects the recruitment of the sample.

Ice‐Marginal Proglacial Lakes Across Greenland: Present Status and a Possible Future

AbstractIce‐marginal lakes can affect glacier dynamics but are ignored in studies of the evolution of the Greenland ice sheet (GrIS) and of peripheral mountain glaciers and ice caps (PGICs). Here we show that lakes occupy 10% of the GrIS ice margin and occur on 5% of PGICs. Ice velocity at the GrIS margin is enhanced by ∼ 25% at lakes versus on land. Mean ice discharge into lakes is ∼4.9 Gt.yr, which is ∼1% of ice discharged through marine termini. We locate thousands of subglacial overdeepenings within which 7,404 km2 of future lakes could form, all of which will be ice‐marginal at some time. Future lakes in the west and east will be restricted to the margin of the GrIS and within alpine valleys, respectively. This status and possible future leads us to contend that lakes should be incorporated into projections of Greenland ice loss.

Which sustainability objectives are difficult to achieve? The mid-term evaluation of predicted scenarios in remote mountain agricultural landscapes in Slovakia

The Poloniny National Park (Poloniny) is a forest/grassland-dominated ecosystem, peripherally located on the Slovakian border with Ukraine and Poland, with low population density, economic insufficiency and high natural and cultural values. Three different scenarios for agricultural landscape development were outlined for Poloniny in 2005 under the BioScene project and their likely contributions to achieving participatory-selected sustainability objectives were assessed. Our current research aims to evaluate the recent trends in achieving these sustainability objectives in a socio-ecological context and within the scope of the 2005 scenarios. In addition, we searched for generic and site-specific interventions that could halt the collapse of the socio-ecological system of such landscapes, paying attention to tourism which has appeared to be a promising factor in the region’s socio-economic progress in recent times. We employed information from key planning documents, statistical data on demography, changes in agricultural land use, changes seen from geo-tagged photos, and two questionnaire surveys with local stakeholders. The first survey included feedback on achieving the 2005 sustainability objectives and perceived changes in land use and management; the second aimed to find out the number of accommodated visitors in recent years. Based on sustainability appraisal, we conclude that there has been a mixed impact on biodiversity and natural resources, and a negative or stagnating trend for most social and economic aspects, especially social infrastructure for promotion of local job creation and maintaining the local population. Furthermore, changes in agricultural land use reflect farming activities optimised to local biophysical conditions and toward reaching farm efficiency under the conditions set by the Common Agricultural Policy. Nevertheless, ecotourism was found to be an opportunity in stimulating multi-functional and sustainable landscape management: ecotourism has significantly expanded in the last few years, especially due to local initiatives, and has been further accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, its long-term maintenance is uncertain since its linkage to the well-being of the local community is absent. For achieving this objective, we recommend systematic design of targeted rural policy which respects the needs and character of peripheral mountain regions, provides better conditions for sustainable farming, especially in connection with nonproduction benefits from agricultural landscape such as recreation and biodiversity, and considers local actions and knowledge.

The Northern Drakensberg Cableway: An Unworkable yet Immortal Development

This study explores the proposed ‘Drakensberg Cableway’ in the Northern Drakensberg. This cableway project is mired in ongoing controversy with both the consultation process and feasibility study heavily criticised. The proposed site of the cableway borders a world heritage site, is within a culturally sensitive area and prone to highly variable weather, including thunderstorms and high winds. The purpose of this study was to garner the views of a mountain user group in South Africa regarding the proposed cableway using a questionnaire survey. Respondents were overwhelmingly not in favour of the development. Users noted several serious concerns ranging from economic, environmental, statutory and political impacts. In particular, the proposed cableway appears financially unsustainable due to low tourist numbers. Additionally, the infrastructure required will have a deleterious effect on the natural environment. It appears that lessons from South Africa’s other two cableways, in terms of economic impacts, environmental issues and weather-related risks, have not been considered. While the provincial KwaZulu-Natal government may punt the proposed cableway as a ‘silver bullet’ solution for the development and social issues bedevilling the area; the project may instead even exacerbate already fraught social and environmental conditions, both at the proposed lower cableway and upper cableway station. Government officials touting this project need to recognise that tourism development in peripheral mountain areas has to proceed within a much wider social and cross-sectoral economic development context.

Does the environment matter? Depopulation in the Sudetes (case study of the Kłodzko region, SW Poland)

Out-migration and the resulting depopulation are currently one of the distinct problems worldwide. The aim of this research was to evaluate the influence of environmental factors on depopulation. We considered natural agents with long-term, constant, or gradually changing impacts and discussed the possibility of decoupling the role of the environment from overlapping non-environmental factors. The research was conducted for the Kłodzko region in the Sudetes, a representative example of a depopulating peripheral mountain and border area in Central Europe. The methods included: comparative analysis from census data from the mid-19th century until the present, and regression-based spatial modeling. The key role of natural features was confirmed to strengthen the out-migration and land abandonment. However, separating the impact of environmental and socio-economic factors turned out to be hard to quantify. The environment can be perceived as a passive element of depopulation unless there is a change which activates the reaction chain and the equilibrium threshold is exceeded. The change might be within the environmental system itself, or it might be related to external drivers such as socio-economic, political, institutional, etc. transformations. In the latter case, the environment would react as a local modifier of external non-environmental processes.

A forgotten subspecies of the land snail speciesArianta arbustorumfrom a Pleistocene refuge in the Western Alps

ABSTRACTAlpine Arianta populations from the Biellese Alps in Italy are characterized by imperforate, thin-shelled, dark brown shells without or with sparse light spots that resemble widespread phenotypes of Arianta arbustorum arbustorum found in calcium-deficient areas. Therefore, they were not considered a distinct taxon. However, molecular phylogenetic analyses show that they belong to a group of subspecies of A. arbustorum from the Western Alps and the Pyrenees. We classify them as a distinct subspecies, Arianta a. doriae (Paulucci, 1878), which reduces the geographical gap between the western group of subspecies of A. arbustorum and the Eastern Alps where Arianta originated. This subspecies survived the glacials in a peripheral mountain refuge at the southern margin of the Biellese Alps.

Heritage storytelling, community empowerment and sustainable development

In many disciplines, storytelling has gained recognition as a powerful tool for sharing wisdom, stimulating empathy, transmitting knowledge and persuading audiences about promotional messages. With the emergence of the worldwide web first, and social media more recently, much attention has been focused on the potential of digital storytelling. Storytelling is also considered by some as a means to safeguard and provide access to Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), for example through documentation and inventorying practices built on narration or through the development of websites and applications. Public availability and marketing of ICH may however expose heritage bearers to risks of misappropriation, decontextualization or misrepresentation, as has been recognized by the UNESCO’s 2008 Operational Directives for the Implementation of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. How is it possible for heritage bearers to benefit from ICH storytelling while mitigating these risks? This article builds on work carried out in the context of two research projects that dealt with digital storytelling in very different manners: AlpFoodway, a EU Interreg Alpine Space project (2017–2019), which aimed to create a sustainable development model for peripheral mountain areas based on the preservation and valorization of the traditional Alpine food heritage; and the ongoing British Academy for Sustainability project “Celebrating local stewardship in a global market: community heritage, intellectual property protection and sustainable development in India”. Thanks to the lessons learned in the context of these two projects, this article shares some considerations on how approaches to storytelling developed in the field of marketing can assist with community empowerment and sustainable development. As a result, it contributes to a better understanding of the understudied and little understood conditions under which ICH entanglement with the market can be carried out in heritage sensitive and legally savvy manners that empowers individuals, groups and communities that are ICH bearers and ensures that they are the prime beneficiaries of the economic benefits of commercialization.

Detailed tectonic reconstructions of the Western Mediterranean region for the last 35 Ma, insights on driving mechanisms

Slab retreat, slab tearing and interactions of slabs are first-order drivers of the deformation of the overriding lithosphere. An independent description of the tectonic evolution of the back-arc and peripheral regions is a pre-requisite to test the proposed conceptual, analogue and numerical models of these complex dynamics in 3-D. We propose here a new series of detailed kinematics and tectonic reconstructions from 35 Ma to the Present shedding light on the driving mechanisms of back-arc rifting in the Mediterranean where several back-arc basins all started to form in the Oligocene. The step-by-step backward reconstructions lead to an initial situation 35 Ma ago with two subduction zones with opposite direction, below the AlKaPeCa block (i.e.belonging to the Alboran, Kabylies, Peloritani, Calabrian internal zones). Extension directions are quite variable and extension rates in these basins are high compared to the Africa-Eurasia convergence velocity. The highest rates are found in the Western Mediterranean, the Liguro-Provençal, Alboran and Tyrrhenian basins. These reconstructions are based on shortening rates in the peripheral mountain belts, extension rates in the basins, paleomagnetic rotations, pressure-temperature-time paths of metamorphic complexes within the internal zones of orogens, and kinematics of the large bounding plates. Results allow visualizing the interactions between the Alps, Apennines, Pyrenean-Cantabrian belt, Betic Cordillera and Rif, as well as back-arc basins. These back-arc basins formed at the emplacement of mountain belts with superimposed volcanic arcs, thus with thick, hot and weak crusts explaining the formation of metamorphic core complexes and the exhumation of large portions of lower crustal domains during rifting. They emphasize the role of transfer faults zones accommodating differential rates of retreat above slab tears and their relations with magmatism. Several transfer zones are identified, separating four different kinematic domains, the largest one being the Catalan-Balearic-Sicily Transfer Zone. Their integration in the wider Mediterranean realm and a comparison of motion paths calculated in several kinematic frameworks with mantle fabric shows that fast slab retreat was the main driver of back-arc extension in this region and that large-scale convection was a subsidiary driver for the pre-8 Ma period, though it became dominant afterward. Slab retreat and back-arc extension was mostly NW-SE until ∼ 20 Ma and the docking of the AlKaPeCa continental blocks along the northern margin of Africa induced a slab detachment that propagated eastward and westward, thus inducing a change in the direction of extension from NW-SE to E-W. Fast slab retreat between 32 and 8 Ma and induced asthenospheric flow have prevented the transmission of the horizontal compression due to Africa-Eurasia convergence from Africa to Eurasia and favored instead upper-plate extension driven by slab retreat. Once slab retreat had slowed down in the Late Miocene, this N-S compression was felt and recorded again from the High Atlas to the Paris Basin.

Un aspect du rôle des TIC dans une localité de montagne : étude du cas de Kamiyama, Japon

This paper explains the satellite office project in Kamiyama Town, which is located in a peripheral mountain area with an aging population in the Myōzai District of Tokushima Prefecture. Kamiyama has leveraged broadband to attract ICT industry from urban areas, create employment and encourage young workers to move to the town. Several key factors contributed to success in Kamiyama, including the capabilities of innovator companies, the capacity of the local host organization ‘Green Valley’, the existence of a horizontal network among companies that have moved to the area, and convenient access to home offices and markets in Tokyo and Osaka. On the other hand, a limited supply of old houses suitable for use as satellite offices and the cost of transportation to major cities are both significant barriers to the revitalization of this peripheral mountain village.

Evaluation needs and temporal performance differences of gridded precipitation products in peripheral mountain regions

Gridded datasets are of paramount importance to globally derive precipitation quantities for a multitude of scientific and practical applications. However, as most studies do not consider the impacts of temporal and spatial variations of included measurements in the utilized datasets, we conducted a quantitative assessment of the ability of several state of the art gridded precipitation products (CRU, GPCC Full Data Product, GPCC Monitoring Product, ERA-interim, ERA5, MERRA-2, MERRA-2 bias corrected, PERSIANN-CDR) to reproduce monthly precipitation values at climate stations in the Pamir mountains during two 15 year periods (1980–1994, 1998–2012) that are characterized by considerable differences in incorporated observation data. Results regarding the GPCC products illustrated a substantial and significant performance decrease with up to four times higher errors during periods with low observation inputs (1998–2012 with 2 stations on average per 124,000 km2) compared to periods with high quantities of regionally incorporated station data (1980–1994 with 14 stations on average per 124,000 km2). If independent stations were considered, the coefficient of efficiency indicated that only three of the gridded datasets (MERRA–2 bias corrected, GPCC, GPCC MP) performed better than the long term station mean for characterizing surface precipitation. Error patterns and magnitudes show that in complex terrain, evaluation of temporal and spatial variations of included observations is a prerequisite for using gridded precipitation products for scientific applications and to avoid overly optimistic performance assessments.

Mobilising memoryscapes: tourist entanglements at two Catalan Civil War sites

ABSTRACTThis paper’s ambition is to explore how the material, social and symbolic legacy of conflicts that have taken place since the turn of the twentieth century may be made more resonant and comprehensible to visitors. We take the Spanish Civil War sites in Catalonia as emblematic of the issues and entrenchments which to date hinder their full potential as sites of reconciliation, awareness and identity-shaping for Europeans. After analysing their current situation and embedding in place strategies, which is remarkably different – one in a peripheral mountain location and one in the very core of Barcelona’s touristscape –, our research examines the way in which historical memory is constructed, narrated and practiced in those spaces, underlining unsolved issues and contradictions. In retrospect, this research contributes to the critique of the very concept of historical memory, its patrimonialisation and the modes of social construction of heritage in the ‘age of mobilities’.

Is the Goddess Haḍimbā Tantric? Negotiating Power in a Western Himalayan Sacrificial Arena

Neither the goddess Haḍimbā of the Western Himalayan Kullu Valley in Himachal Pradesh nor the frequent animal sacrifices that are offered to her are presented as Tantric by her devotees. The heated controversy in the region over the legitimacy of these sacrifices is also not interpreted in association with Tantra. However, if we situate both Haḍimbā and the controversy over sacrifices to her in a broader context, it becomes evident that this is but a stage in a lengthy process of negotiation between peripheral mountain religion and mainstream Brāhmaṇic Hindu ideals. It also becomes apparent that these negotiations are quite similar to those that took place in Assam in the eighth century and that gave rise to and shaped Tantra there. If the processes are indeed similar, this could reveal that Haḍimbā is a Tantric goddess after all or, at least, that the sacrifices made to her by the kings of Kullu are based in the logic of Tantric rituals of power.