Not long ago it was assumed there was little early human activity in high-altitude zones. Now a team led by a University of York archaeologist proves that the hills were alive in the French Alps. MATT CLARK reports.

IT looks beautiful and welcoming on a balmy summer day. With warm sun and gentle breezes, the towering mountains of the Ecrins National Park are an oasis of calm.

But they can also be perilous, especially in winter. After all, who’d want to be caught up here in a blizzard, let alone move in?

Well, surprisingly, quite a few and, astonishingly, this region was popular with Stone Age hunters.

Even academics weren’t aware of this until the first team of archaeologists was given permission to work in the park a few years ago. They were led by Dr Kevin Walsh, of the University of York, and Florence Mocci of the Centre Camille Julian, Aix-en-Provence.

“Many researchers had assumed that early societies showed little interest in high-altitude landscapes,” says Dr Walsh. “But this research shows that people, as well as climate, did have a role in shaping the Alpine landscape.”

Dr Walsh says there has been a shifting population in this area for a very long time. Indeed a fleeting glimpse of Upper Palaeolithic activity, circa 11,000 BC, was provided by a single backed-blade flint discarded near a valley pass.

And thank goodness for flint, much of it found in ‘scatters’ of tools, because most of the Ecrins terrain is sandstone. Being acidic, that means bones dissolve, so there are no skeletons to find.

Flint, though, comes from elsewhere and was used to make weapons and tools. Its presence confirms that hunters were lured to the Alps by seasonal movements of wild animals.

The star find, so far, is a Neolithic flint arrowhead discovered above 8,000 feet; the highest ever unearthed in France. But perhaps one of the most crucial discoveries was a cluster of flint arrows which prove that Stone Age hunting camps were set up above 6,500 feet; the upper reaches of the Alpine tree line.

Once this was considered too remote and marginal for early man, but as Dr Walsh’s study proves, nothing could be further from the truth.

“This is the best evidence we have that Mesolithic hunters incorporated the high altitudes into their seasonal territories,” says Dr Walsh. “They perhaps acquired these tools of their trade through exchange with neighbouring groups.”

Temporary camps were established on plateaus above the tree line, because that allowed hunters to safely prey on animals migrating upwards in spring and summer to graze. But being transitory settlements there are few, if any, possessions to discover, no pottery, no trinkets.

Flint aside there is nothing. Well almost nothing. Most of the research is carried out by studying deep core samples taken from peat or lakes.

Carbon dating organic material found in these samples allowed the team to chart fluctuations in tree numbers at Ecrins naturally caused by climate changes over the past 10,000 years.

But they discovered it also happened due to human manipulation, thanks to remains of charred wood dating from the Neolithic Age, which is when man changed from hunter-gatherer to an agrarian way of life. These burnt offerings are from forest clearings and provide clear evidence of the first farms in the French Alps. “Early alpine farmers probably grew wheat and barley. We don’t know exactly because the pollen grains held in the core samples only give a general impression of produce. But we can say there was arable as well as pastoral (livestock) agriculture.”

One reason why is that Dock pollen have been identified; a sure sign of husbandry, because this plant thrives on nitrogen from animal waste.

Some of that waste is also present in the core samples and, by using a groundbreaking technique, Dr Walsh believes he can discover which species were raised from DNA found in it.

“We think DNA from faeces attaches itself to clay particles in the sediment and it’s that which is being extracted.

“This is the next stage in this type of research and would allow us, for the first time, to say what animals were present.”

Traditional archaeology still has its place and offered clues into how the alpine landscape altered from the late Stone Age through to the Bronze, Iron, Roman and Medieval ages.

Perhaps the biggest surprise it delivered is proof that moving livestock from wintering lowlands to alpine pastures during summer, has been carried out for thousands of years.

Known as transhumant agropastoralism, the practice was introduced in Languedoc at the beginning of the Neolithic, but the idea of it being carried out so early in the Alps had never been entertained.

“It was thought transhumance started in the Roman period, because no one before had unambiguous evidence for it going back further.

“But we have excavated ten stone sites in the Ecrins that radio carbon date to late Neolithic. These are essentially the first alpine animal enclosures.”

They show that the Neolithic Age was as crucial to the history of alpine landscapes as it was elsewhere.

And this 14-year study is proving just as important to the archaeological landscape. Until now no one had been given permission to carry out fieldwork in a French national park and Dr Walsh’s team has produced one of the most detailed investigations ever carried out at high altitudes.

Covering the Mesolithic to post-Medieval periods, it has radically changed our understanding of activity in the sub-alpine and alpine zones, particularly during pre-history.

“Archaeologists generally assumed that human activity in the French Alps was at best negligible, at worst non-existent,” says Dr Walsh. “Today we have a record that dates back to the tentative beginnings and only now do we have a clear understanding of how these remote, beautiful areas were exploited by people over the millennia.”

• The Stone Age covers a period of about 2.5 million years, from the first use of tools by human ancestors to the introduction of agriculture. It is subdivided into the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic periods, and succeeded in Europe by the Bronze Age about 5,000 years ago.

• The research is the result of collaboration between the Department of Archaeology at the University of York; The Centre Camille Jullian UMR 7299 CNRS/Aix-Marseille Université; L’Institut Méditerranéen de Biodiversité et D’Ecologie marine et continentale, The Regional Archaeology Service (Provence, Alpes-Cote-d’Azur) and the Ecrins National Park