The visible landscape. Inferring Mesolithic settlement dynamics from multifaceted evidence in the south-eastern Alps.

This paper focuses on the high visibility of the Mesolithic record in the Eastern Italian Alps and discusses the factors that have favoured the collection, in the last thirty years, of multifaceted evidence which allowed one of the most successful models of prehistoric European mountain landscapes to be defined. It also contains a critical review of the main approaches and criteria which were adopted over time in order to delineate the current settlement pattern. In particular, the latter was analysed by considering different levels of resolution, from intra-site organisation to the identification of mobility routes. The reason why the current model no longer seems to completely fit the variability of the available record may be the existence of more complex dynamics than was previously believed. These still await a closer study, at both a synchronic and a diachronic level. The authors argue that recent work suggests that a more realistic vision of the matter will depend on enlarging the range of methodologies used by applying a truly multidisciplinary large-scale approach to the data.