Introduzione. Minatori nelle Alpi: prospettive storico-antropologiche

The first objective of this book is to shed light on the cultural side of an activity such as mining which in the Alps, not unlike in the rest of the world, has mainly been studied from an economic or technological point of view. Bringing out the distinctive characteristics and the many facets of mining culture is also necessary in order to establish a valid comparison, with explanatory paradigms of the economy that make it possible to assess what in the Alpine area has been the "weight" of cultural factors in guiding the choices and the lives of the miners. A second objective is to verify to what extent the mining cultures of the Alps are historically defined, or have persisted in the long term, if certain cultural traits are locally specific or if they have a wider spread throughout the Alps; or, indeed, if they are related to cultural models that are even more diffused and established for mining populations from other parts of the world, including the more distant ones.