Trentino Alto Adige

Abstract

An alpine area criss-crossed by deep valleys, Trentino owes many of its landscape features to its geographical morphology. Nevertheless, humans also played an important role in shaping it over the centuries, reclaiming valley bottoms and wresting mountain areas from the forest to clear up space for agriculture and grazing. Forests dominate the landscape, accounting for 65 % of the surface of the province, while cultivated fields only cover 4.3 % and pastures 19 %. The Utilized Agricultural Surface (UAS) thus amounts to 23.6 % of the total. While limited in extension, however, it is an agriculture of long historical persistence. The earliest remains of terracing apparently date back to the Iron Age, and are thus a testimony of the early adaptation of man to a difficult environment with very steep slopes and boggy valley bottoms. During the second millennium B.C. the area appears to have been inhabited by the Raetian ethnic group, whose settlement pattern was characterized by a sequence of fortified citadels along the main valleys, with stable farming, crop rotation, and a reduction of the practice of slash and burn. By this time, high-mountain summer grazing with the shepherds residing in permanents shelters, and milk and cheese production appear to have been well established. The excavations of San Zeno in the Val di Non unearthed a whole array of agricultural and forest equipment as early as the fifth century B.C., and hence predating Roman domination.