Ethnoarchaeology: Current Research and Field

Methods Conference Proceedings, Rome, Italy,

13th–14th May 2010

Edited by

Francesca LugliAssunta Alessandra Stoppiello

Stefano Biagetti

BAR International Series 24722013

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Ethnoarchaeology: Current Research and Field Methods. Conference Proceedings, Rome, Italy, 13th–14th May 2010

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Introduction

The exploits of the bandit Abramo Zeni, perhaps evenbecause he never killed anyone, have had so strong a kindof Romantic appeal on a large number of people, that thefigure of “el Castrin” inspired a local band song, was takenas an example of social riot by a group of Anarchists andcan finally be seen amongst the characters of a painting.The continuous allusions to a refuge, emerging from anumber of accounts, gave me the motivation for a firstsurvey to the Bus del Castrin, a cave located above thevillage of Sarche (Fig. 1); in this place it was possible forme to examine what remained of the bandit refuge. This isthe starting point of the idea of a cross-disciplinary researchin which all the different sources of information can beinserted. The problems concerning similar studies has beenrecently discussed by Marco Milanese (MILANESE 2005),which lingered over the relationship between archaeologyand oral sources.As for the relationship between events and memory, someschool of thoughts of cultural anthropology show howmemory is not necessarily (or closely) related to the fact initself and, as a “cultural construction”, it is formed in totallydifferent ways depending on the social status of theindividual or of the group (FABIETTI, MATERA 1999).But is it possible to start a cross-disciplinary studyconcerning a single individual? And with which meaningsand developments?The famous work by Carlo Ginzburg, “The Cheese and theWorms”, talks about the miller Menocchio, who lived inFriuli (Italy) in sec. XVI; as in the present case, it concerns

a single person, equally peculiar and not representative ofbroader segments of population (GINZBURG 1976). Inother works, Ginzburg takes issues with both FernandBruaudel and the structural-functionalist Frenchhistoriography, which see, with strongly negativeconnotations, the microhistory as “evenemential history”that cannot be reconnected to the inner structure of society.In Ginzburg’s opinion, on the contrary, we have to thinkabout society as “…the result of the interaction betweennumerous individual strategies; an interweaving which onlya close observation allows to reconstruct” (GINZBURG1994).

Fig. 1. Southern Trentino and some of the places frequentedby Abramo Zeni.

Places and Exploits of the Bandit Castrin: Material Results, Events Perceptionand Memory BuildingLuca Pisoni

Abstract

The text concerns the life of the bandit from Trentino Abramo Zeni (1912-1986), captured by Nazis in 1944. A first aimis to connect the biographical reconstruction of his life with the archaeological deposit discovered in the cave where heused to live after going into hiding. A second aim is to understand, thanks to the interviewed people, the mechanisms ofmemory-building concerning those events. The most important result is a methodological one: archaeology, as well ashistorical sources, is able to reconstruct even the story of a single person. Lastly, very interesting are the different kindsof memory: the outlaw “Robin Hood”, the rebel bandit and the “noble bandit”.

KEYWORDS: Ethnoarchaeology, Oral History, Banditry, Memory-Building, Material Culture Studies.

Résumé

Cette contribution concerne la vie du bandit trentin Abramo Zeni (1912-986), capturé par le Nazis en1944. Un premierobjectif est celui de connecter la reconstruction biographique de sa vie avec le dépôt stratigraphique retrouvé dans la grottedans la quelle il se réfugia lorsqu’il été fugitif. Un deuxième objectif est celui de déceler, à travers les personnesinterviewées, les mécanismes d’élaboration de la mémoire relative à ces mêmes épisodes. Le résultat le plus important setrouve au niveau méthodologique: l’archéologie, de paire que les sources historiques, est capable de reconstruireégalement les événements liés à une seule personne. En plus, sont aussi très intéressantes les différentes types de mémoires:le bandit “Robin Hood”, le bandit révolté et le “bon bandit”.

MOTS CLES: ethnoarchéologie, histoire orale, banditisme, construction de la mémoire, étude de culture matérielle.

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On the archaeological horizon, even Ian Hodder polemizedwith Braudel, reckoning that the latest has given too muchimportance to structures at the expenses of single events(HODDER 1987).On the contrary, Hodder underlines that archaeology has tostress the importance of both the facts, the individual andthe social action (Agency; HODDER 2000).

Tasks and Methods

A first task of this work is to connect the historical-biographical reconstruction of Abramo Zeni (1912-1986)with the archaeological deposit found in the cave in whichthe bandit set his refuge during his absconding. With thisaim I used three lines of research: the examination of thenewspapers of the period, the interview to direct witnessesto the life of the bandit and an inspection in the cave. A second task is to understand, in the interviewed people,the mechanisms of memory elaboration, which led tocompletely different results depending on the social statusof the interviewed.

The interviews to the newspaper “L’Adige” and“L’Alto Adige”

On June 27th 1973 Abramo Zeni went back to his villageafter 29 years of imprisonment and, as it is noticeable fromthe newspapers’ titles, he was welcomed back as a poor

emigrant returning from a long trip. Here is presented anextract from the interviewed which was published on thenewspaper “L’Adige” (July, 18th, 1973; Fig. 2).“I practically never knew my parents; since I was a child Iwas a resident guest in the Nursing Home in Cavedine, andthen I started working as a shoemaker. On March 1939 Iwas called up; I was assigned to the Yugoslav front, but Ideserted. It was then that my life of torment started; I hadto steal in order to survive, but I gave what was more to myfellows countrymen which were poorer than me. I was thenarrested and, after one year of jail, called up again. Onceagain I deserted (1941). Together with some fellows, onFebruary, the 9th, 1944, I went to the village of Pergoleseto “settle the scores” with Noè Frioli, a person with whichI had made some robbery, but which I suspected to havemade the stolen goods disappear from my refuge. We hadweapons with us; we stopped in front of his house, and Icalled him out loud. Frioli let himself down a windowwhich was in the back, then entered the cowshed and wentout of it with a fork in his hands. I shot him in his left leg,but he succeeded in hitting me in the forehead and in theeye with an axe. I recovered consciousness in the hospitalof Arco, where I was arrested by the Germans; I tried tospeak in my defence by confessing that my desertion hadpolitical origins (I was with the partisans) and theysentenced me to 24 years of jail, to which they added allthe condemns for minor offences (thefts).

Fig. 2. On the right Abramo (Gino Zeni), welcomed back by his fellows countrymen when he was released from jail; onthe left, Zeni with the Major in the village bar (“L’Adige, July, the 18th, 1973).

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The Interviews to the Witnesses

Between the year 2004 and 2009, together with IvanMontagni, I made about fifteen interviews to differentpeople in order to reconstruct the main events in thebiography of Abramo Zeni.

The boy from SarcheFirst of all, our source told us about a big leather theft in theshoe factory of Sarche, for which everyone blamed thebandit. The informant led then us in the nearby of the so-called “Bus del Castrin”, a cave located over the village ofSarche; he told us that, as a child, he used to pass next tothis place when putting the goats out to pasture, he fearedthat place and tried to walk quicker when getting there inthat, sometimes, it was possible to feel the presence ofsomeone and, in some cases, to see a gun barrel poppingout from the inside.

The girl from SarcheThe informant remembers well the Castrin lover, called “LaSpongina”, which was said to sleep with the bandit in the“refuge” and could be sometimes seen walking through thevillage streets. During the winter she used to wear a fur, and this was theonly fur which both the informant and all the villagers ofSarche had ever seen.

The other interviewsFrom the other interviews it emerges how the Castrin wasnot actively wanted, both because he stroke terror intopeople (even into the police), and for the “socialconnotation” of his actions which gained him the respectof people (a consistent number of informants confirm thefood gift made to the poor families). Equally interesting are the accounts of some people whowere robbed by him, amongst which there are a peasantfrom Pergolese, a shopkeeper from Cavedine and the son ofa miller from Calavino.Besides being seen as tolerable happenings, these facts arenow just funny anecdotes to be told, part of a role playinggame in which the players were on one hand the ruralbourgeoisie, and on the other the outsiders (bandits,shepherds); at these figures we now look with a sense ofnostalgia thinking about those past times in which liveswhere free from social constrictions. The Castrin thus becomes a kind o “noble bandit” (vaguelyresembling the “noble savage” myth, which was equallyfree from the restrictions of civilization), which in the endnever killed anyone and, overall, never put in seriousdanger the existing social equilibrium.On the contrary, different is the point of view on this storyof both the rock band La Guerrigliera and the group ofAnarchists; both the text of the song Abramo(http://www.laguerrigliera.it/Abramo.html) and the articleon the Anarchist periodical Adesso (ADESSO 2002),

Fig. 3. The gorge made by the river Sarca and the Bus del Castrin. Inset above: one of the two entrances, which is locatedabove the street.

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underline the courageous choice to rebel against a systemwhich forces its son to fight in war. More generally, the interview show a basis of collectivememory, which can be recognized clearly in the sentence(which was repeated to me a lot of times, even byinformants very different in age and social status): “TheCastrin was a person which took [things] where there wereenough and put them where there weren’t”.

The Bus del Castrin:Area, Structures and Objects

The Bus del Castrin is a narrow cleft in the rocks of MonteCasale, and it runs all across the rock face until its base,where the river Sarca flows (Fig. 3). It is possible to reachit both from the top and from the bottom of the mountain,by climbing for various metres up the rock which from thestreet below leads to a narrow crack. The survey on thecave, which took place on May, the 11th, 2009 in accordwith the Soprintendenza dei Beni Librari ed Archeologici diTrento, allowed me to discover the remains of two hearthsand a lot of objects which suggest a structure’s collapse.

The structuresThe concentration of objects (Fig. 4.3) covers a length ofabout 3,5 metres, and is constituted of small pieces ofwooden beams, sheets of corrugated iron, bricks andbroken glasses; these objects are usually used in roofing.At the northern extremity, the concentration ended againsta great rock, where it was possible to see the presence of ahearth made of a great concentration of pieces of coal (Fig.4.1). A second hearth was found not very far from the first,

between two big rocks and the rock wall (Fig. 4.2). A smalladjoining space, from which pieces of wooden beams,wires and an open food tin come, was used as a garbagedump (Fig. 4.4).

The objectsFrom the cave come several objects, of which I here presentonly a small sample.The fragment of dish (Fig. 5.1) was lying amongst severalothers, and on its bottom is written the name of the factory:

Fig. 5. The objects found in the Bus del Castrin.

Fig. 4. The inside of the Bus del Castrin.

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Zemanek & Cornell, Trieste. Surfing the net, the onlyinformation one can retrieve comes from Ebay, where thereis still the track of a sale announcement, which isunfortunately expired, about two commercial letters ofZemanek & Cornell, dated 1924.The pitar fragment (Fig. 5.3) comes from one of the severalpotteries produced in the neighbourhood between sec.XVIII and XIX, which were used for household use. Theuse of such vases can vary, depending on the cases, fromfood conservation, to food cooking, to serve water or wine(KEZICH, EULISSE, MOTT 2002).I showed the food tin (Fig. 5.2) to two old localstorekeepers, and they say they have dealt with such tins;the tins contained fish and were sold to people in fundsalready immediately before the Second World War. Thelack of brands, inscriptions or other elements does notallow to set the characteristics of the steel knife (Fig. 5.4).I showed the leather piece (Fig. 5.5) to an expert localshoemaker, which made me notice that the object, if cutwith a knife or another sharp implement, can be interpretedas the waste material of a bigger piece of leather. Moreover, from the refuge comes a small glass bottlewhich, in the opinion of the researchers of the Museo delProfumo in Milan, belongs to the production of the MaisonGrenoville in Grenoble (Fig. 5.6). This bottle is a standardone, which was produced in a continuative way betweenthe Twenties and the Forties, and was used to containperfumes, lotions and other cosmetic preparations.

Conclusions and Considerations

The first aim of the present work is to intersect the threelines of research and verify whether they support each otheror, on the contrary, are in conflict one with the other. The comparison between the lines led to find somecommon points where the sources overlapped, coincidingone with the other in different ways.Think for example to the interview the bandit granted thejournalist, in which he defined himself a partisan; this factfinds no equivalent in any of the accounts, nor in thehistorical horizon, and could have led him to consequencesworse than being imprisoned.In other cases, like for example for the leather piece andthe shoemaking profession of Zeni, which was revealed byhe himself to the newspaper, the different sources areperfectly complementary. The plates, the French perfume bottle and the fish tin,which at that time must be considered as real status symbol,are maybe what remains now of the bandit stolen goods.The French perfume bottle is perhaps a gift by Zeni for hislover (as it was maybe the fur described by the girl fromSarche, too). The hearths, the ruined refuge and the garbagedump indicate that the refuge itself was used as a “dwellingplace”.The most important result is therefore a methodologicalresult; in fact, firstly, it becomes clear how both biographyand archaeology can operate together in reconstructing asingle person’s life, and secondly, we have confirmationthat archaeology, and more in general the material culture

study, can provide a lot of information which often otherdisciplines cannot provide.The second aim, that is to analyse the mechanisms of theelaboration of memories, that are formed in totally differentways depending on the social status of the individual or ofthe group, is derived from the subjects analysed in theintroduction, concerning the work by Carlo Ginzburg.It can be noted that there is a level, which can defined“popular”, where the bandit is seen as a sort of Robin Hood,he who “took [things] where there were enough and putthem where there weren’t”; this sentence was repeated tome from many informants different in age and social status,and its influence reached even the front page of thenewspaper “L’Adige”. The memory-building made by boththe rock band La Guerrigliera and the group of Anarchistshas a political and social connotation instead, since theyput the stress on the aspects of revolt against war andagainst the system. The figure of the “noble bandit” has itsorigin in the middle class, and was created by those whowere victims of his robberies; they identified as “otherness”the image of the outlaw free from the social restrictions, towhich they used to look with regret.

Acknowledgements

The Author would like to acknowledge Franco Nicolis(Soprintendenza Beni Librari e Archeologici di Trento) forthe archaeological data; Marina Chemotti for the Englishtranslation; Nadia Pisetta for the French translation.

References

“ADESSO” (2002) Castrin. Adesso, 13, 6 giugno 2002,Rovereto (TN), p. 5.FABIETTI, U. MATERA, V (1999) Memorie e identità:Simboli e strategie del territorio, Maltemi, Roma.GINZBURG, C. (1976) Il formaggio e i vermi: il cosmo diun mugnaio del ‘500, Einaudi.GINZBURG, C. (1994) Microstoria: due o tre cose che sodi lei. Quaderni Storici, 86, pp. 511-539.HODDER, I. (1987) Archaeology as long-term history,(New directions in archaeology), Cambridge UniversityPress.HODDER, I. (2000) Agency and individuals in long-termprocesses. In: M.A. Dobres, J. Robb, (eds.) Agency inarchaeology, London: Routledge, pp. 21-33.KEZICH, G., EULISSE, E., MOTT, A. (2002) Museo degliUsi e Costumi della Gente Trentina. Nuova guida illustrata,Trento (Italia).MILANESE, M. (2005) Voci delle cose: fonti orali,archeologia postmedievale, etnoarcheologia. ArcheologiaPostmedievale, 9, pp. 11-30.

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