The writings of the shepherds

On the heights of Mount Cornón in the Fiemme valley of Eastern Trentino there lies a high chalk massif situated above the communities of Tesero, Panchià, Ziano di Fiemme and Predazzo on the valley's right side which has been intensively cultivated in the recent past through a forestal-pastoral economy. Thousands of still visible inscriptions remain up there which bear witness to transhumance and local pasturage activities.

There are initials, symbols, dates, names, tallies of livestock, animal figures and greetings.

This habit of the solitary shepherds driving small flocks on their brief seasonal transhumance of tagging rocks with decorative inscriptions in a very methodical and conscious fashion is already well-known from many other grazing contexts in the Alps (as Valcamonica or Mount Bego) and elsewhere. The ongoing historical-ethnographic and ethno-archaeological research of the ethnological Museum of the Uses and Customs of the People of Trentino on the rupestrian sites of the Cornon massif aims to reveal the circumstances of pastoral life in the Val di Fiemme over the last three centuries by studying the writings, and thus also to discover the particular socio-economic and cultural context which allowed the writings to emerge.