High-Altitude Archaeology in Southeastern Europe

The scope of this entry is to describe and discuss some aspects of high-altitude archaeology. The paper focuses mainly on the data available from four important mountain regions of Southeastern Europe, which show quite different geomorpho-logical characteristics, climate, altitude, and lati-tude: the Alps, the Carpathians, the Pindus, and the Caucasus. During the last 50 years, archaeological research in the highland zones has greatly improved. Moreover, it started to attract attention of many archaeologists throughout the world. These changes were due to the developing consciousness that mountains do not necessarily constitute impassable natural barriers for humans. This is demonstrated also by the fact that they are inhabited, at least since Medieval times, by peo-ples with very similar attitudes, behavior, and cultural background though often speaking differ-ent languages and dialects.