PaTHS - Pastoral Tracks Heading South: The evolution of the droveways (tratturi) in Central-Southern Italy

PaTHS (Pastoral Tracks Heading South: The evolution of the droveways (tratturi) in Central-Southern Italy) will promote an innovative trans-disciplinary approach to understand how transhumance and its mobility routes shaped the character of Mediterranean landscapes in the long term. Transhumance is a type of pastoralism entailing a seasonal movement of livestock between summer and winter pastures along designated trails. The long evolution of transhumance in Southern Europe generated pastoral landscapes, characterised by unique ecosystems and networks of droveways connecting pastoral sites. Today, the historic landscapes of transhumance are key economic, ecological, and cultural assets, and their sustainable management is promoted by local governments and international organisations. The project will focus on Central-Southern Italy, where the historic transhumance network included about 3,000 km of iconic droveways (tratturi) and where pastoral activities are documented since the Early Neolithic (6th mill BC). To the best of our knowledge, droveways have never been directly investigated using archaeological methods. Furthermore, the correlations between pastoral routes and the wider archaeological and historic landscape have rarely been systematically analysed. The goal of PaTHS is to fill this knowledge gap. By combining landscape archaeology, landscape history, ethnoarchaeology, geosciences, palaeobotany and geospatial analysis, PaTHS will unravel the history of tratturi and the evolution of pastoral landscapes and environments, to promote good management practices and inform future policies.