Researchers of the UB collaborate with French research centres to study the origin of mountain landscapes in Cantal

Photograph of the mountains in Cantal.
Photograph of the mountains in Cantal.
(12/04/2012)

A team of the UB made up of Santiago Riera and Yolanda Llergo, researchers of the Seminar of Studies and Prehistoric Research (SERP), which is directed by professor Josep Maria Fullola, take part in a research project in collaboration with the laboratory GEOLAB (CNRS-University Blaise Pascal) and the Research Centre of Quantitative History (CNRS-University of Caen) in order to determine the origin of the mountain landscapes in Cantal (France) and find out how they have been shaped by farming practices since prehistoric times. Historians, archaeologists, paleoenvironmentalists and botanists collaborate together in the project with the aim of tracing the history of farming, mountain pasturelands and the origins of cheese production in the region. The mountains in Cantal, in Auvergne region, in the Massif Central, are known worldwide for its cheese specialities.

Photograph of the mountains in Cantal.
Photograph of the mountains in Cantal.
12/04/2012

A team of the UB made up of Santiago Riera and Yolanda Llergo, researchers of the Seminar of Studies and Prehistoric Research (SERP), which is directed by professor Josep Maria Fullola, take part in a research project in collaboration with the laboratory GEOLAB (CNRS-University Blaise Pascal) and the Research Centre of Quantitative History (CNRS-University of Caen) in order to determine the origin of the mountain landscapes in Cantal (France) and find out how they have been shaped by farming practices since prehistoric times. Historians, archaeologists, paleoenvironmentalists and botanists collaborate together in the project with the aim of tracing the history of farming, mountain pasturelands and the origins of cheese production in the region. The mountains in Cantal, in Auvergne region, in the Massif Central, are known worldwide for its cheese specialities.

The French team, made up of Yanncik Miras and Fréderic Sumerly, of GEOLAB, in the city of Clermont-Ferrand, in the Auvergne region, and Violaine Nicolas, of the Research Centre of Quantitative History, carries out the archaeological and historical research which has brought to light evidence of farming practices in these mountains in prehistoric times, and has proved that the impact of the human activity is still visible in the current landscape. Deforestation in altitudinal areas can be observed since Protohistory, when pasturelands were created. Farming gradually became an essential activity in the region during the Middle Ages and especially in the Early modern period, when farming practice is recorded, which represents the origin of current uses and productions.            

 
The SERP team carries out the pollen studies of sedimentary and archaeological records which should help to characterise farming practice types and determine the impact they have had on the mountain landscape over the last 3,000 years. In order to obtain this information, researchers from the UB study the meaning of some micro traces of biotic fossils that may help to establish more accurately the presence of cattle and to characterise the uses of mountain pastures throughout different historical periods.
 
This research is part of the close scientific collaboration among the research teams of SERP, the Catalan Institute of Classical Archaeology and GEOLAB, which has allowed them to develop studies on landscape history in various European mountain systems, such as Massif Cantal, Mont Lozère and the Western Pyrenees.
 
The mountains in Cantal are known for the cheese specialities, with protected designation of origin since 1975. Nowadays the cows that produce the milk for the cheese still graze in the fertile pasturelands that can be found at an altitude of 1,000 metres and which characterise a landscape that is closely linked to this historical practice.