Risk and marginality at high altitudes: new interpretations from fieldwork on the Faravel Plateau, Hautes-Alpes

TY - JOUR

T1 - Risk and marginality at high altitudes: new interpretations from fieldwork on the Faravel Plateau, Hautes-Alpes

AU - Walsh, K

PY - 2005/6

Y1 - 2005/6

N2 - Living at high altitude carries risks, so settlement there can be thought marginal Its success or failure ought to be dependent on the environment and the climate. But recent fieldwork in the French Alps shows that exploitation was not coincident with climatic conditions: Mesolithic people found the hunting good; in the climatic optimum of the Roman period the high altitudes were said to be uninhabitable and apparently were; while in the Little Ice Age of the fourteenth century and later, the high Alps were at their busiest. The author hypothesises that social control and perception, rather than climate, were the determinant factors.

AB - Living at high altitude carries risks, so settlement there can be thought marginal Its success or failure ought to be dependent on the environment and the climate. But recent fieldwork in the French Alps shows that exploitation was not coincident with climatic conditions: Mesolithic people found the hunting good; in the climatic optimum of the Roman period the high altitudes were said to be uninhabitable and apparently were; while in the Little Ice Age of the fourteenth century and later, the high Alps were at their busiest. The author hypothesises that social control and perception, rather than climate, were the determinant factors.

KW - Holocene

KW - French Alps

KW - alpine zone

KW - landscape archaeology

KW - VARIABILITY

KW - LANDSCAPE

KW - PROVENCE

KW - CLIMATE

KW - FRANCE

M3 - Article

SN - 0003-598X

VL - 79

SP - 289

EP - 305

JO - Antiquity

JF - Antiquity

IS - 304

ER -