Le palafitte di Fiavé e il parco Archeo Natura: l'Età del bronzo patrimonio dell'umanità UNESCO

The opening of the Fiavé Archaeological Nature Park (Trento) concludes the development of one of Europe's most interesting archaeological sites, the pile-dwelling site at Doss Torbiera, on the shores of Lake Carera. It is one of the most representative of the 111 sites recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site among the "Prehistoric Pile-Dwellings of the Alpine Arc." FACT SHEET ON THE FIAVÉ PILES The pile-dwellings of Fiavé, particularly the archaeological investigations conducted with a multidisciplinary approach by Renato Perini between 1969 and 1983, have put an end to a century-long debate in the international scientific community. The lake-dwelling myth began in the winter of 1853-1854 in Obermeilen, on Lake Zurich, when Swiss archaeologist Ferdinand Keller observed piles exposed by the lowering of the water just beyond the lake shore. He interpreted them as the remains of an ancient settlement, built on the water thanks to the installation of thousands of piles that would have supported a platform on which the huts stood. Subsequent investigations undertaken by German archaeologist Hans Reinerth in the 1920s in the Federsee peat bog in Germany also provided evidence of the existence of dwellings originally built partly on the shore and partly on dry land, their wooden structures apparently preserved thanks to the humid environment. In 1954, 100 years after their discovery, Swiss archaeologist Emil Vogt stated that the pile dwellings were nothing other than the remains of dwellings erected on the shores of lakes. The debate over whether pile dwellings were in the water or on land was only resolved with the archaeological excavations conducted in Fiavé, where in 1969 Renato Perini began the first systematic research in the peat bog. Deploying an international team of archaeologists and specialists from various scientific disciplines, the Trentino archaeologist identified the remains of at least three pile-dwelling villages. Almost as if to mock the now long-standing academic dispute, it was a village built on dry land on the shore of Lake Carera (Fiavé 1, late Neolithic, 3800–3600 BC), a village of huts on single platforms erected over the water (Fiavé 3-4-5, Early and Middle Bronze Age, 1800–1500 BC) and, finally, a singular village built partly on dry land and partly in water (Fiavé 6, Middle Bronze Age, 1500–1350 BC).