Introduction

Over the millennia, mountains have been the homes of gods and monsters, objects of fear or indifference, incarnations of the sublime, testing grounds for the creation of (usually masculine) identities, objects of life-threatening obsessions, and arenas for the invention of picturesque rural idylls (Buxton 1992; Horden and Purcell 2000:83–84; Macfarlane 2003; della Dora 2018). These “mountains of the mind” (Macfarlane 2003) are geo-mythological accumulations of all the human baggage brought to them by visitors, outside observers, and literati over the generations.

In the eyes (or leg muscles) of the resident but mobile herder or laborer, the geology, weather, topography, soils, wildlife, and vegetation of any specific mountain landscape have their own irrefutable impact. The agency of the mountain directly constrains the inventions of their imagination. Whether herding sheep on the edge of a precipice, digging narrow strips of terraced soils with enormous investment of manual labor, or driving a heavily loaded donkey up a steep and rocky path (Fig. 1), effective human action requires considerable respect for the affordances of the mountain and its ecological communities.

Fig. 1
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Carrying a load up the mountain near Pedhoulas village, Cyprus: a dusty path pushes up a steep slope between angular rocks, with a view down to vineyards in broad, sloping terraces behind (Chapman 1937:193).

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Given the complexity and importance of these communities, defining a mountain solely by its altitude, steepness, or prominence is inadequate. A geo-ecological definition would certainly include these characteristics, but also the very distinct geographical and ecological belts that appear as one climbs up or down them (Byers et al. 2013; García-Ruiz et al. 2020). Along with constant geological and geomorphological variation, these can give a strikingly compressed diversity and allow humans a wide range of productive activities and landscape experiences in a small area (Barton et al. 2004; Düring and Glatz 2015:9–10; García-Ruiz et al. 2020:1–2). Apparent fragmentation and difficult access can actually make socioecological symbiosis and human connections tighter and more intense out of sheer necessity (Horden and Purcell 2000:81; Galaty et al. 2013:2–3).

Historical archaeology, in collaboration with landscape archaeology, ethnography, and ecology, is well placed to tease out these many complex relationships and interdependencies as acted out on the ground. In this article I explore the historical archaeology of mountains in the Mediterranean in the context of their powerful and ongoing mythologization over the last four centuries or so. I will challenge simplified understandings of mountains and of nonhuman and human partnerships, including such labels as “isolated,” “transhumant,” “sacred,” and “remote.” Critiquing romantic visions of mountains is particularly important, given their impact on mountain literature and scholarship. Another important aim is to celebrate and build on the increasingly nuanced, dynamic, and interdisciplinary studies that have appeared in the last few years (Gassiot Ballbè et al. 2016; Moreno et al. 2019; García-Ruiz et al. 2020; Robb et al. 2021).

From Tradition to Rhythm

Mountains are the momentary products of the slow processes of plate tectonics, volcanism, uplift, and erosion that together drive the ongoing process of orogeny, or mountain-building. Human culture drives equally powerful orogenies, as shifting geographies, theologies, literatures, and intellectual currents create perceptual mountains that can be evil, dangerous, spiritual, divine, sublime, timeless, or an arena for consumerism and banal good fun. Being human, we bring our cultural baggage to the mountains: generations of storytelling and precepts; powerful theological orthodoxies; long series of romantic travelogues, each referencing and mimicking its predecessors; and the memes and trends of social media. We experience mountains “through the eyes of innumerable and anonymous predecessors” (Macfarlane 2003:167) and use the terminology of our favorite Renaissance painter or fantasy novelist to frame our interaction with the mountain (Bainbridge 2018:261–269).

One important ramification of this ongoing cultural orogeny is that we humans build our own power relationships into the archetypes we construct. The case for the UNESCO World Heritage status for the Dolomites, for example, is based on romantic stereotypes of beauty and aesthetics applied by elite, literate visitors: this sidelines the lived experience of generations of people living and working there (Bainbridge 2018:259); see also Lekakis (this issue). From the late 18th century, the sublime imaginings constructed for the Alps have exercised a tyranny over visitors to other mountain ranges. In 19th-century travel writing on the Sierra Nevada in southern Spain, for example, the range’s own unique and specific characteristics are buried in an avalanche of Alpine romanticism (Cornejo-Nieto 2018).

This is a major concern for historical archaeology, given its close engagement with contemporary documentary sources as well as archaeological evidence. To take an example from a much earlier historical period, Mesopotamian texts from the late 3rd millennium B.C.E. are overwhelmingly lowland and caricature highland communities as unruly barbarians or as losers to superior lowland armies (Glatz and Casana 2016:127–128). Longstanding scholarly paradigms from not-dissimilar lowland, urban, or imperial contexts mean that these “ancient stereotypes have translated almost seamlessly into modern scholarship” (Glatz and Casana 2016:128).

One specific archetype that is widely held in popular belief, heritage policy, and scholarship is that any mountain practices that are not evidently modern are “traditional” and therefore timeless. This is a term that creeps into historical archaeological and ethnographic accounts of the mountains, even more than it does in other rural areas, because of the mountains’ perceived remoteness. It is, however, directly negated by the clear dynamism in the changing material culture and close dependencies on modern society, such as changing markets and regulations, that the same articles explain so well (Christie, Beavitt, Santonja, Senís et al. 2007:312; Carrer 2017:305; Moe and Fedele 2019:141–143; Robb et al. 2021:16); see also Orser (this issue).

In an ethnographic context, “traditional” can perhaps be used to describe a particular attitude to the past and present. When interviewed in the 1990s, the shepherd Manolo from the Serra de l’Altmirant in eastern Spain was making particular choices about commodities, lifestyle, and place that were viewed by others as old-fashioned; these could reasonably be defined as “traditional” (Christie, Beavitt, Santonja, Senís et al. 2007:317). When the archaeology is considered, however, his corral is not “traditional” at all, in this or any other sense: it is a dynamic juxtaposition of repaired stone walls and ruins from earlier structures with modern materials, such as concrete blocks and corrugated iron (Christie, Beavitt, Santonja, Senís et al. 2007:318).

A closely related archetype is that mountains and their inhabitants are marginal, isolated, and remote. In some instances this might indeed be the case, particularly in the eyes of state officials from a lowland center. But isolation is a question to be addressed, not an assumption to be uncritically accepted. Ethnographic and ethnoarchaeological research shows very well how tightly integrated upland and lowland landscapes can be, particularly when there are constant movements of herds, herders, and dairy products to connect them (Christie, Beavitt, Santonja, Senís et al. 2007; Gassiot Ballbè et al. 2016:43). The Shala Valley Project in Albania contextualizes the use of this trope, examining isolation as a rhetorical device used first by travel writers in the romantic idiom, then by Catholic priests to denounce non-orthodox folk magic, and finally by the communist regime to build an “authentic” Albanian culture with no Ottoman influences at all (Galaty et al. 2013:7–9).

An archaeological problem, as well as an historical one, is that excavation, survey, and artifact analysis tend to produce static images, often based on “sites” or dots on the map. Even in a context where it is known that mobility was fundamental to the society, as so often in mountain communities, it is hard to translate photographs and maps into the flows, connections, and relationships that constituted society (Aldred 2014:25; Goetsch and Kakalis 2018:2). The archaeological and historical worldview that has been inherited, it seems, has conspired to hold up mountains as icons of permanence, bastions of tradition, emblems of isolation.

To counter this, I would like to propose that mountains move. In geological terms, the mountains that are seen are in the midst of the same uplift and erosion processes that began and will end their millions of years of biography. Volcanism continues to move mountains: Mount Etna is erupting as I write, with plumes of volcanic ash fountaining into the air, molten lava gushing down the slopes, and a rain of stones and ash falling on nearby villages. Geomorphological processes, such as rockfalls, debris flows, erosion, and sedimentation, are all very much active in mountains across the Mediterranean. Rather than being emblematic or iconic, mountains are “key moments of a topography,” evanescent appearances of place and time (Goetsch and Kakalis 2018:3). Mountains are active and lively, constantly exercising a powerful influence on the people living, working, and traveling on them, along with the domestic animals, fields, crops, and wild plants and animals on which they rely.

Mountains also move in the eyes of people moving within them. Views, gradients, texture, geology, vegetation, and weather all continually change in the eyes and under the feet of the traveler. Human experience and connections can be investigated by focusing on the paths, tracks, roads, junctions, shelters, and inns that are the material culture of human movement and connectivity. The contouring path in Figure 2, for example, is a carefully planned and constructed route (termed a dromos, or road) with resting places, formal junctions, and lasting memories among the villagers of nearby Palekhori (Gibson 2007). Good survival of such features in the mountains often means that examining the material culture of movement can be a very productive and stimulating approach (Smith 2005; Gibson 2007; Ejarque and Orengo 2009; Aldred 2014).

Fig. 2
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“Dromos tou Appis”: the “Appis Road” running along the ridgeline from Palekhori village to the now abandoned settlement of Appis in the northern Troodos Mountains of Cyprus. (Photo by Michael Given, 2004.)

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These experiences and connections are local, specific, and often transient; but they also work within a broader framework of rhythm and pattern (Given 2020). Daily, monthly, and seasonal changes work together with closely integrated human rhythms. Rockfalls and sedimentation have their own rhythms: weather events, animal behavior, and human initiatives can push them over a tipping point and herald a new phase of active mountain processes (Gordon et al. 2001:326; Byers et al. 2013:13). Rhythms are not always regular, predictable, or harmonious. Seasonal (and unseasonal) weather and the early or late ripening of the vegetation can support or threaten herds and flocks and their herders; travelers, fires, and rockfalls can contribute to highly complex, contrapuntal, or clashing rhythms (Flemsæter et al. 2018). As archaeologists, we can look for the rhythmic signatures in lines of cairns (Aldred 2014), paths and junctions, corrals, vegetation patterns, or the lobes and flows of past rockfalls.

This rhythmic approach to the historical archaeology of mountains has some specific requirements. We archaeologists need to challenge static narratives and claims of the “traditional” and instead look for mobility, fluidity, tension, change, and dynamism (Forbes 2007a). An ecological approach that integrates mountain geology and topography, fauna and flora, and human practices is essential (Stagno 2019:312; García-Ruiz et al. 2020). Our analysis needs to be “articulated and discontinuous” (Stagno 2019:313), following the many different trajectories of socioecological mountain communities. The survey archaeology of historical periods is well suited to distinguishing such micro-archaeologies and microhistories (Galaty et al. 2013:239), particularly when carried out alongside an examination of the accompanying micro-ecologies (Horden and Purcell 2000:80–83; Campana 2018:23–24).

Mountains as Archaeological Practice

The practical challenges of mountain archaeology are well known and include difficulties of access, poor ground visibility, significant risks to the team’s safety, and often the ephemerality and poor preservation of the archaeological remains themselves (Glatz et al. 2015:53). The cultural challenges, however, have often been even greater, particularly the long-held but often unstated assumption that there is no significant archaeology in the mountains. This last is a product of very specific theoretical and methodological choices, often based on broader concepts, such as “marginality,” “isolation,” and “poverty of natural resources.” Projects that have tackled the challenges of intensive survey in the mountains have convincingly demonstrated how rich highland areas can be in archaeological evidence and important research issues (Gibson et al. 2013; Gassiot Ballbè et al. 2016:36).

One clear common theme in the discussion of mountain survey methodology is pragmatism. The need to ensure the safety of the team and the productiveness of the effort spent in doing mountain fieldwork often sits in tension with Mediterranean-style intensive systematic transects that provide a representative sample of the survey landscape. These work well in arable land or rolling hills, but often turn out to be impracticable on steeper mountain slopes.

A quick review of mountain survey methodologies illustrates these tensions and the range of solutions (see Figure 3 for a location map). A common starting point is to exclude steep slopes, impenetrable maquis, and anywhere else of possible risk to the team, as was done by the Methana Survey Project in the eastern Peloponnese in Greece in the 1980s. They surveyed as much of the rich coastal zone as they could, were more selective in the 100–400 m above sea level (masl) zone, and sampled the highest areas with systematic transects that were designed to be topographically and environmentally diverse (Mee and Forbes 1997a:33).

Fig. 3
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The Mediterranean region, with countries, mountain ranges (in italics), and places mentioned in the text. (Map by Michael Given, 2003; background image courtesy of ESRI.)

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The Cide Archaeological Project on the Black Sea coast of Turkey similarly found that inaccessible forest cover and steep slopes greatly restricted their effective survey area, and that systematic field walking along transects was impossible because of poor ground visibility and the often-small pockets of accessible land (Glatz et al. 2015:62–63,76–77). Their solutions included “meandering” transects to increase recovery of artifacts and area covered, complemented by grid squares in areas of high density or importance (Glatz et al. 2015:77–82). The Aspromonte Field Survey in southern Italy similarly focused on areas and features that were visible and accessible, such as clearings and areas of modern disturbance (Robb et al. 2021:17).

While a strong element of pragmatism is clearly essential, it is equally important not to reject any form of systematic and representative survey. On the Troodos Archaeological and Environmental Survey Project in the northern Troodos Mountains of Cyprus between 2000 and 2005, the research philosophy was committed to systematic, not purposive, survey. The dogged pursuit of intensive transects by field walkers 5 m apart up and down steep slopes covered with pine needles was perhaps not very cost-effective in terms of field-walker time. That scrutiny of the surface and intensive experience of all facets of the mountain landscape, however, led to new classes of artifacts being recorded, experimentation with the methodology, and a range of structures and features in very unexpected situations. Precisely because they were unexpected, they were hard to explain, let alone predict (Gibson et al. 2013:204–205).

Thanks to systematic transect survey, the mountain survey team found new understandings of the diversity and cultural richness of the mountain landscape around the Asinou Valley and became more sensitive to the diverse and often vestigial evidence of past human activity and mobility (Fig. 4). This included late Roman structures reused seasonally in the Ottoman (1571–1878) and British colonial periods (1878–1960), systems of check dams to provide sequences of tiny triangles of soil along gullies, resin tapping and pitch kilns, and a complex network of paths. Mapping of shotgun cartridges demonstrated how hunters of partridges and hares used the topography to aid their hunting (Gibson et al. 2013:241–242).

Fig. 4
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The Asinou Valley, Cyprus, from Stavros church looking west, July 2003. Transects ran north–south up and down the slopes to the right. (Photo by Michael Given, 2003.)

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Systematic archaeological survey is just one of a suite of archaeological practices in the mountains. The analysis of ecological dynamics alongside cultural and social factors can give important insights into the diversity and interdependence of mountain socioecological communities (Moreno et al. 2019:3) (see below). Remote-sensing methods are becoming increasingly important, though very steep gradients and large altitude ranges can be challenging (Reinhold et al. 2016). Airborne laser scanning (ALS) is still a new and comparatively little-used technique in the Mediterranean (Campana 2018:10). One effective use was the investigation of charcoal-burning practices in the forests of Tuscany in central Italy, along a gradient from sea level to 1400 masl covering three different forest types (Carrari et al. 2017). The project compared the results of the ALS with archaeological field survey, complemented by botanical and soil analysis.

The historical archaeology of mountain regions in the Mediterranean has often been carried out in close collaboration with ethnography or even under the guise of ethnoarchaeology. Hamish Forbes’s “archaeological ethnography” (Forbes 2007b) was based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork in the mountainous Methana Peninsula in southern Greece combined with codirecting a major archaeological survey project there (Mee and Forbes 1997b). This combination of participative ethnography and archaeological landscape survey provides real inspiration for understanding the very diverse mountain landscapes across both the Mediterranean and the chronological spectrum.

Ethnoarchaeology has great value in broadening the understanding of systems, solutions, and practices, which can then inspire more nuanced and thoughtful interpretations of mountain societies in the more distant past. It can also be treated as historical archaeology in its own right, regardless of its utility to prehistorians or otherwise. The most stimulating and enjoyable project reports are those that show equal enthusiasm for archaeology and ethnography, to the point where it becomes impossible to distinguish them, e.g., Palmer and Smith (2000), Christie, Beavitt, Santonja, Seguí et al. (2004), Christie, Beavitt, Santonja, Senís et al. (2007), Galaty et al. (2013), Peña-Chocarro, Pérez Jordà et al. (2015), and Carrer (2017).

One such ethnoarchaeological project was carried out in the Western Rif mountains of northern Morocco by a team composed mainly of Spanish researchers. They engaged with an impressively wide range of aspects of mountain life: agriculture, pastoralism, olives, wild plants, and pottery manufacture (González Urquijo et al. 2005); einkorn cultivation (Peña-Chocarro, Zapata et al. 2009); and the use of wood and dung fuel (Zapata et al. 2003). Particularly interesting is their work on storage, a major concern for communities living in mountains or anywhere else with significant ecological patchiness and unpredictable weather patterns. The range of solutions are of considerable ethnoarchaeological interest due to their lack of visibility in the archaeological record. These include cane baskets, underground silos, and food containers made of pottery and dung (Peña-Chocarro, Pérez Jordà et al. 2015:382–383).

Another solution is a very unusual set of small, rectangular mud-brick granaries on a mountain slope at Kalaah, north of the town of Chefchaouen (Fig. 5). These belong to families from a series of neighboring villages and were used to store valuables (e.g., jewels, money, documents) and food (e.g., cereals, oil, honey) (Peña-Chocarro, Pérez Jordà et al. 2015:384). The area is well defined and distinctive, set against cliffs, and a defended and guarded door leads to a path that winds up among the granaries, of which 80 out of the original 578 are preserved (Peña-Chocarro, Pérez Jordà et al. 2015:383). This seems to be a variant on the massive fortified communal granaries of Morocco and Andalucía, usually on a defensive hilltop or against a cliff, and dating to the 12th–20th centuries (Eiroa Rodríguez 2011).

Fig. 5
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Raised granaries at Kalaah, Western Rif, Morocco, September 2001. (Photo by Leonor Peña-Chocarro, 2001.)

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Archaeological assignment of functional causes for this grouping of granaries would stress its defensive character, the safety in numbers, and perhaps the community solidarity that it demonstrates. The ethnography makes the additional point that local people considered this landscape of storage and protection to be sacred and told the story that 40 wise men were buried within it. Because it is sacred, no wood cutting was allowed within the area. This gives an important insight into the sacred landscape. Religious precepts and cultural expectations drive which practices can take place, and they in turn create a very distinctive and visible partnership with the ecological community. The sacred landscape, then, is created by this socioecological relationship and presented as a patch of mature forest with some monumental holm oaks (Quercus ilex).

This ethnoarchaeological study challenges the separation of “functional” storage space and “symbolic” sacred sites. As will be seen below, sacred areas in the mountains are not so much defined or symbolized as practiced by communities of humans, rocks, soil, water, animals, and plants. This demonstrates neatly the wider point that archaeological practices and methods in the mountains need to be interdisciplinary, flexible, critical, and thoughtful. This is particularly evident in the historical archaeology of transhumance.

Transcending Transhumance

“Transhumance” can be a dangerous term. The stereotypes of timeless mountains and traditional shepherds are so strong that they have incorporated transhumant practices into a pastoral idyll, an ethnographic present that is separated from the modernity of towns, industry, and instant communication; see also Saidel (this issue). As has been seen, ethnographic and archaeological evidence directly refutes this stereotype. Such is the Alpine tyranny over imaginings of mountains that the Alpine model of transhumance, often itself oversimplified, can be superficially imposed onto the huge diversity of Mediterranean patterns of mobility and pastoralism (Horden and Purcell 2000:83–86).

Technically, transhumance can be defined as long-distance pastoral travel across different regions, as opposed to “transterminance,” which refers to short-distance travel within a specific mountain or valley complex (García-Ruiz et al. 2020:2). Given the diversity of mountain practices, this distinction is unhelpfully reductive, and more commonly “transhumance” is used as an umbrella term for any sort of regular movement by herds and herders to maximize grazing or market opportunities. As Eugene Costello and Eva Svensson (2018:1–3) persuasively argue, restricting the term to a very tight definition would limit discussion and comparison of pastoral practices and mobilities across both regional and disciplinary boundaries. It is more productive to be responsive to local variations while stimulating links across regions and disciplines.

In this spirit, much recent work has shown a very productive commitment to the micro-archaeologies (and micro-histories and micro-ecologies) that I discuss above. The patterns, movements, and relationships of mountain pastoralism are complex and interesting, with a range of elaborate strategies and organizational structures (Carrer and Angelucci 2018). In what has been termed “inverse transhumance,” for example, shepherds in parts of Greece and Italy were based in the mountains, but brought their flocks down to the plains for winter (Topping 1974:316; Horden and Purcell 2000:81; Carrer 2015).

Rather than looking to identify transhumance, it is better to ask questions about connections and relationships between people and the animals, plants, and landforms with which they worked. How did they engage with the behavior patterns of livestock, the characters of bedrock and soil patches, seasonal cycles, and unexpected weather variations? What about the species and rhythms of grasses and tree fodder, networks of paths and tracks, and patterns of marriage, status, and feuding (Galaty et al. 2013:244; Flemsæter et al. 2018)?

Ecological analysis clearly plays an essential role here. At a peat bog on Mont Lozère in the southeastern part of the Massif Centrale in France, for example, Jaime Servera Vives and colleagues combined the analysis of pollen, charcoal, coprophilous fungi, and archaeological remains. This allowed them to trace the development of pastoralism from the medieval period to its decline in the 19th century (Servera Vives et al. 2014); see also Jouffroy-Bapicot et al. (2016). In the central Spanish Pyrenees, García-Ruiz and colleagues synthesized palaeobotanical, sedimentological, and geomorphological data to trace not just the long-term trajectory of pastoralism, but its close and complex association with deforestation, the destabilization of slopes, and the increased sedimentation in lakes that provided the evidence for much of this. The large-scale and long-distance management of sheep and its environmental impacts peaked in the late 18th century, but collapsed along with the Spanish wool trade in the earlier 19th century, exacerbated by the Napoleonic wars (García-Ruiz et al. 2020).

Often the socioecological relationships are too complex, wide reaching, and interconnected to be defined as “transhumance” or even “pastoralism.” Some 30 years of work by the Laboratory of Environmental Archaeology and History at the University of Genoa explored precisely this in the eastern Ligurian Apennines, ca. 25 km northeast of Genoa in northwestern Italy. It explored multiple management systems and the close interaction between diverse ecologies and equally diverse human practices (Moreno et al. 2019:1–3).

Key to understanding these relationships in the East Ligurian Apennines in the postmedieval period is the role of tree crops and tree pasture. Vegetation survey at Prati di Sara (1600 masl), for example, demonstrated that there was richer and better forage under beech trees, but also that the biodiversity was much greater than in the impoverished meadows beyond the beech trees. The dynamic here is complex and is an ongoing product of the micro-topography of winds, slopes, and water, the fire regime controlled by the shepherds, and the animals themselves (Moreno et al. 2019:8–10).

Down at lower elevations in the Aveto and Trebbia valleys (800–1200 masl), the different environmental and social context generated a complex system of alnocoltura based on small plots of gray alder. From the 18th to the early 20th centuries this involved a 5- to 10-year cycle of coppicing the alders, stripping and burning the turf, cultivating wheat and rye, grazing cattle on the alder shoots, then coppicing again (Molinari and Montanari 2016; Stagno 2019:317–318). This created a patchy landscape with high biodiversity and a wide variety of practices (Molinari and Montanari 2016:40).

Mobile pastoralism was an integral part of these systems, but was itself complex and varied. Long-distance movement mainly of sheep competed with and was eventually replaced by the more local monticazione system, the transfer of cattle between their winter stables and mountain pastures (Stagno 2016:75; Moreno et al. 2019:8). This was closely intertwined with structures called “casoni,” tree crops, arable agriculture, and rights of land use in a particularly complex, dynamic, and localized manner––so much so that it is hard to generalize across different areas.

From the 16th to the early 18th centuries, the casoni provided temporary shelter for shepherds and their animals, and storage for hay on higher common lands (Stagno 2016:85,92). From the second half of the 18th century they were built lower down, between 600 and 850 masl, close to arable terraces and usually in or at the edge of private land (Stagno 2016:76,91). These were substantial stone structures built of double skin walls with a rubble core and an upper story as a hayloft and for other storage (Stagno 2016:77–78). Rather than just serving pastoralists, they sit at the core of complexes of terraced groves of chestnut trees, irrigation channels to water them, and stables for the cattle to fertilize them. Palynological analysis in these terraces suggests that they were fertilized by grazing animals and that they produced not just chestnuts, but wood, cereals, fruit, and hay (Stagno 2016:84). Ongoing transformations in the 19th century showed great local variety depending on specific environmental conditions and variations in the systems of communal land use. All this created a highly complex and varied landscape with a high resolution of socioecological patches.

The intricate nature of these dynamics clearly requires considerable attention, skill, and experience on the part of the herder-farmer-arboriculturist-builder-irrigation engineer. One ethnographic demonstration of this is provided by Thomas Schippers’s (2016) participant observation of long-distance sheepherders in the southeast of France in the 1970s and 1980s. They perceived the landscape with which they worked as a patchwork or ensemble of plots that varied according to a wide range of factors. These included the nutritional quality of the grass, the degree of protection from the wind, the steepness of the slope compared to the particular habits and abilities of different breeds of sheep, and the amount of work required by the shepherd and dogs to control and protect the sheep.

It is clearly impossible to do justice to the complexities and intricacies of these relationships with a restricted definition of transhumance or pastoralism (Saidel, this issue). More productive is a thick description of the roles of the many different human and nonhuman partners and their relationships, consisting of closely focused micro-archaeologies, -ecologies, and -histories (Cevasco et al. 2015:3178). The local view must be complemented by pulling out the broadest and fullest web of connections possible, not just social and economic, but material, ecological, and experiential.

Performing Mountains

The hill walkers studied by Hayden Lorimer and Katrin Lund (2003) performed their mountains. They read the ground through their feet and legs, continuously adjusting their stride and direction, and interacted with topography, texture, and weather using props, such as boots, walking poles, maps, and GPS. All these interactions and joint performances continually created and recreated the mountain-plus-walker. However much stability and monumentality is assigned to mountains, it is through abstract and physical actions and interactions that humans and the mountains create dynamic landscapes, socioecological communities, and cosmologies (Walsh and Mocci 2011; Goetsch and Kakalis 2018:2–3). This is why European visitors could extract so much power from the Swiss Alps, Dolomites, and Sierra Nevada: they exploited the visual form of the mountains to construct and perform new ways of seeing and being, and to set themselves above local residents, their readers, and, paradoxically, the mountains themselves (Bainbridge 2018).

Many of these practices and performances produce what humans would conceptualize as sacred space and sacred time. Like all such performances, times and spaces are dynamic, fluid, and collaborative. This is a more helpful and constructive approach to understanding mountain cosmologies than assigning essentialist and static categories such as “sacred mountain.” This is particularly evident from the long association of mountains and pilgrimage. Mountains may be considered as somehow closer to God, and so appropriate arenas for divine manifestations, such as the angel Jibreel appearing to Mohammed on Jabal an-Nūr (“Mountain of the Light”), or God appearing to Moses on Mount Sinai. Mountains that become sites of pilgrimage, such as Mount Athos or Meteora in Greece, might also need a physical and mental infrastructure of boundaries, routes, and viewpoints (della Dora 2012). But it is the geological structures, surface textures, and weather conditions of the approach route that generate the sacred moments.

This is why the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route across northern Spain cannot just skirt the steep 800 m climb of the mountain of Mostelares that lies in its path. It must lead the pilgrims right up and over it so they can perform both pilgrimage and mountain through muscular ache and penance (Candy 2009:100–101). Earlier on their route they have contributed stones to the great cairns on the high plateau west of Hornillos del Camino, showing future pilgrims the way and through this performance creating communities of pilgrims across time (Candy 2009:83–84).

Another dramatic arena for such performances is the rugged volcanic landscape of the Methana Peninsula in southern Greece. A series of lava flows and slower extrusions of more viscous lavas in the Pleistocene have created a landscape of steep-sided volcanic domes with blocky volcanic agglomerates between them (James et al. 1997:7–13). Erosion has formed steep colluvial slopes on the lower parts of the domes and alluvial fans at their bases and along the coast (James et al. 1997:13–16). This means that arable soil is in very short supply, and farmers have had to rely on extensive sequences of agricultural terraces on these lower slopes and alluvial fans (James et al. 1997:17,27–28). Each terrace was an ongoing performance by the volcanic rock, slope, soil, gravity, farmers, rainfall, draught animals, crops, place names, and weeds.

It is almost impossible to separate agricultural practice and other forms of manual labor from ritual practice. This is very clear at the church of Profitis Ilias, the prophet Elijah, in its characteristic position virtually at the top of a steep-sided lava dome (713 masl) (Fig. 6). Elijah, in popular Greek practice and belief, was closely associated with the rain, thunder, and lightning that he used to battle the dragon and the devil. These associations gave him the power to control weather and send rain, and mountaintops were considered the logical place for such actions. He and his deeds were celebrated by lighting bonfires on all his mountaintops and the villages in view of them on his feast day of 20 July (Megas 1963:142–143; Forbes 2007b:360).

Fig. 6
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Andesite dome of Profitis Ilias from above, with northeast at the top of the photo. The church can be seen just above the center, with agricultural terraces on the steep southern face below it, and part of the zigzag path halfway up the photo on the extreme right. (Photo courtesy of Tobias Schorr, 2016, <https://www.methana.com>.)

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In Methana, climbing the path up the steep andesite hillslope to the church of Profitis Ilias was considered an act of piety in itself (Forbes 2007b:369–370). That act of piety was experienced directly and bodily as the worshipper climbed the steep zigzag path up the southern face of the dome. So was the building of the church in 1892, partly on the remains of its medieval predecessor. The work was shared by villagers across Methana and was remembered by children and grandchildren and prominently displayed by the church on its mountaintop. Similar construction stories were still being told about other churches in Methana in the 1970s (Forbes 2007b:359–360).

The village of Kypseli on the east of the peninsula lies between two imposing volcanic mountains. Immediately above it on the south is the rounded dacite dome of Malya Khoriou (or Kossona), its lower flanks still steep but mantled with colluvium. Much of this is covered with agricultural terraces, though above each end of the village are prominent debris flows. On the village’s north is the lower and less steep Malya Jonaka, the flows of its more fluid andesite lava still clearly distinguishable. Apart from “Khoriou” (Greek for “village”), the names are in Arvanitika, a local dialect of Albanian introduced following extensive Albanian settlement in Greece from the medieval period onward (Forbes 2014:88–89). Malya Khoriou is “Mountain of the Village,” recognizing and celebrating the close relation between the village and the mountain towering over it. The seaward side of Malya Jonaka has the locality name “Brinëzë,” meaning “ribs,” referring to the agricultural terraces that reach nearly to the top, and again declaring a close human–mountain relationship (Forbes, Hamish 2021 Pers. com.).

In 1896 the inhabitants of Kypseli decided that their old church of Panaghitsa was too small for their growing population and decided to build a new one in the center of the village immediately between the two mountains. In the 1970s, Forbes (2007b:356–357; 2015:207–208) recorded the oral history of the decision about the saint to whom it would be dedicated: the longevity of the story suggests its cultural significance. They narrowed down the choices to either Saints Peter and Paul, or Saint Anthony. Their final choice was Saint Anthony: as a hermit of the deserts and mountains of Egypt, they decided, he would protect them from the boulders that could fall from the mountain because of a hard frost or an earthquake. The debris flows that stop just above the village show the necessity for such protection.

Saint Anthony, then, is at the heart of a narrative through which people express and perform their relationship with the mountain. Building and planting terraces, constructing a church, climbing a mountain on the saint’s feast day, and telling stories about the frost-shattered outcrops rising above the village are all performances, played out by people and mountains alike.

Conclusions

However they are defined, mountains have a striking diversity and fluidity of topography, weather, geology, water flow, vegetation, and human society. Even more striking are the elaborately entangled relationships and interdependencies among all of these. This makes them exciting places to carry out archaeological and interdisciplinary research, and of course brings specific challenges, from the practical difficulties of fieldwork to the continuing power of stereotypes and disciplinary silos.

One of the main strengths of mountain archaeology in the Mediterranean is the energy being put into addressing these challenges, as the case studies and examples in this article demonstrate. Theoretical work is bringing new paradigms of mobility, performativity, interaction, rhythm analysis, and socioecology. To complement this, archaeological practice in the mountains is becoming more interdisciplinary, involving large teams of collaborating specialists and exciting new technologies, and working more closely with local communities.

This article aimed to review and celebrate mountain archaeology in the historical Mediterranean. The stimulating theoretical approaches and innovative methodologies used by many of the projects that I have used as case studies can clearly be applied to areas beyond the Mediterranean and periods before the 15th–21st centuries. Approaches such as mapping mobility, heeding the socioecological rhythms, analyzing socioecological relationships, and participating in collaborative mountain performances have equally strong potential for medieval Scandinavia or the prehistory of the Americas. The ecological and social diversity of the historical Mediterranean makes it the ideal stimulant and comparandum for mountain studies elsewhere.

One of the more benign legacies of romanticism, combined perhaps with a much deeper sense of the powerful role of mountains in human society and culture, is the ability of mountains to inspire human emotion, effort, and creativity. Historical archaeologists working in the mountains are increasingly engaged with mountain heritage, finding new ways to help stimulate interactions and entanglements that are beneficial for mountains, ecology, local people, and visitors. These include intergenerational storytelling (Gibson 2020), the integration of natural and cultural heritage (Speed et al. 2012), mountain eco-museums (Canavese et al. 2018), and a “neo-transhumance” that promotes mountain biodiversity and markets environmentally friendly and high-quality food products (Costello and Svensson 2018:11).

These mountains are not sublime or traditional or isolated. They are dynamic, modern, and relevant, engaging locals and nomads of all varieties with the intricacies of the socioecological relations that generate these lively, ever-changing landscapes.