Alla ricerca delle valli perdute. Conoscenze locali e pratiche d’uso in alta montagna tra XVII e XVIII secolo, uno studio interdisciplinare sulle Alpi Nord-occidentali

[Machine translation] The study focuses on the use of high mountains in the western Alpine sector in a diachronic perspective that embraces the 17th and 18th centuries. The privileged subject of this work is the relationship between Alpine populations and the high mountain environment examined in the different declinations of valley activities. In the first part, traces of this knowledge were sought in documents of military origin, including ample scope given to the memoirs of the Savoy officer J. B. Rouzier regarding the western border of Piedmont. In the second part, we dealt with a more circumscribed area, the Lanzo Valleys, of which documentary sources were searched in local archives capable of reconstructing some of the activities carried out at high altitude; including mining, grazing practices, border defense, trade and smuggling at high altitude, hunting and religious rituals related to the mountains. The thesis aims to demonstrate how the high-altitude alpine environment was known, exploited and traveled by local populations in the centuries just before the official birth of mountaineering.