The story of a stone, of a tree, or a mountain: anthropological connections between the valleys of Fiemme and Piné

Abstract

The area between the Fiemme valley, the Cembra valley, and the Piné Plateau shows remarkable similarities in the way in which natural resources, in particular porphyry and fir wood, have been extracted and exploited. This article analyses the intertwining of historical convergences and divergences between the two territories through the research experience of the two authors. The affordance of stone and wood are not sufficient to define the cultural modalities of their exploitation, nor to understand the configurations of the extractive landscapes, but they acquire meaning only considering the economic and political processes that made the extractability and abstraction of the resources possible. In other words, the resource is the historical outcome of a cultural reorientation of stone-material and wood-material through specific overarching dynamics of translation and valorization.