Paper short abstract:

Through ethnographic inputs, this paper discusses how artifacts and religious festival performances contribute to produce, express and transform the South Tyrolean borderscapes, promoting a reflection on the role of religion and religiosities in the recent history of this region.

Paper long abstract:

As an Alpine borderscape region, the South Tyrol has been since long time a zone of transit and cultural interchange. It has also been affected by bloody wars, violent nationalisms and ethnic conflicts. Embedded in this Alpine border-landscape, several artifacts, practices and performances refer to local religion and religiosities. Landscape indeed could be conceived of as an ecological, sociocultural and political environment, one that unfolds its own temporalities and cyclicality.

Within the ritual year cycle, in many villages people perform religious ceremonies and festive activities to celebrate their Patron Saints. These performances often enact and stage kinesthetic symbols, which link to sociopolitical aspects of the South Tyrolean borderscapes. The iconographic and sensorial landscapes people produce through the celebrations, for instance, often refers to the history of Tyrol, a region that belonged to the Austria-Hungarian Empire until the end of the First World War, when it was divided by the new political border between Austria and Italy.

Through ethnographic inputs, this paper aims to discuss how the many artifacts and forms of religiosities embedded in the landscape as well as the religious festival performances contribute to produce, express and transform the South Tyrolean borderscapes, promoting a reflection on the role of official religion, subaltern religiosities and local religious institutions in the recent history of this region. Bringing together ethnographic cues and insights from historical literature, the paper will raise questions about the historical role of local religion and religiosities in producing and transforming borderscapes.