Bronze Age Land Use in the Central Alps: GIS-based investigation of influencing environmental and economic factors

Abstract

Since 2006, the interdisciplinary project “Leventina – Prehistoric Settlement Landscape”, funded by the Swiss National Foundation, is being conducted under the coordination of the Department of Pre- and Protohistory of the University of Zurich with researchers from further disciplines. The project investigates prehistoric settlement and economy in various altitudinal zones of the Alpine Ticino valley. One of the aims is to reconstruct the agricultural, pastoral and forestal land use in the Bronze and Iron Ages, and to evaluate the influencing factors on the spatial distribution of subsistence economy areas. A wide range of spatial and archaeological data as well as literature and field data describing properties in particular of the ancient economic plants was available for the purpose. Based on these data, a factor analysis and a subsequent prediction were conducted in order to evaluate the variables with a likely impact on agricultural land use at prehistoric times, and to detect potential agricultural land. Additionally, using predictive modeling, we aimed at extracting factors with impact on the spatial distribution of Bronze age settlement sites and generating a potential map of areas used for settlement. Furthermore, a cost path analysis was conducted to investigate different traffic routes across the main ridge of the Alps in terms of travel time.