The Agricultural and Pastoral Complexes of the North-Eastern Majella

During the 18th century the end of feudalism and the demographical increase produced the cultivation of the mountains in the Abruzzi both at a low and at a high altitude.

The new farmers went as far as 1400-1500 metres of height, so it was nacessary for them to realize a refuge in the place of their work. There, where the availability of the right material made it possible, they made a dry stone hut. A quite small hut was very often enough for all the necessities of the field's owner. But there where the estate nedeed a bigger work strength, the hut had to assume much more important dimensions. When an agricultural fund had also a certain number of cattle, there were the right conditions for the birth of a pastoral-agricoltural complex of dry-stone huts. Since in these seasonal farms moved whole families, some particular structures apt to the accomodation of men and animals and to the storing of products were necessary.

The typical hut complex was formed of a dormitory hut, of a product-storing hut and of a place reserved to the milking proceeding; all these parts were enclosed into the walls of a fold divided in different enclosures for sheep. In the dormitory hut they realised an upper level with piles and a wooden floor. The inferior room could be used as a warehouse or a beasts of burden's stable. In the storing hut they could also make dairy products, but they preferred to light the fire outside in a corner of the fold.Often the milking place was made up of a two entry hut, so it was possible to work indoor. They moved to these summer areas and they tilled the land and looked after their flocks pasturing in the incultivated areas; it was a permanent sheep breeding in fact the small number of sheep didn't justify a ranshumant transfer. In fact the particular way of building of the complexes we have just described, show the will to create something quite steady and lasting, connected with the ground: these buildings appear quite different from the pastoral complexes situated above which are much more elementary and precarious. Then, we can say that the pastoral-agricultural complexes in the north-eastern Majella, real seasonal farms, represent the greatest expression of dry-stone architecture in the Abruzzi.