For more than a century, aerial ropeways have been among the most ingenious solutions for overcoming gradients and access difficulties typical of mountain landscapes. Originating in the nineteenth century within the extractive sector and later adopted in agriculture, forestry and construction, they have created a genuine “aerial mobility of things”, profoundly reshaping the circulation of materials and resources between valley floors, slopes and ridgelines.
Despite this strategic role, ropeways—especially small, temporary or artisanal ones—remain underexplored archaeologically. The doctoral project “Suspended Mobilities” aims to fill this gap by studying ropeways as lightweight yet highly agentive infrastructures: technical systems capable of transforming landscapes, local economies, social practices and collective memories.
The main case study focuses on the Versilia Apuan Alps, particularly the area of Stazzema. The objective is to restore ropeways to their proper place within contemporary archaeological and landscape narratives, moving beyond a rigid distinction between past and present.

Research Lines
1. Survey and archaeological documentation
• Identification and mapping of ropeways in the Apuan Alps.
• Recognition of stations, routes and surviving structures.
• Reconstruction of the infrastructural network and its evolution over time.

2. Social, economic and environmental relations
• Analysis of use contexts (agricultural, forestry, settlement-related).
• Study of impacts on the landscape and local economies.
• Integration of material, archival and ethnographic sources.
• Assessment of symbolic dimensions and the social memory of ropeways.

3. Mountain mobility and contemporary routes
• Reconstruction of circulation dynamics activated by the installations.
• Study of temporary systems and their functional logics.
• Analysis of the effects on high-altitude mobility and territorial organisation.

Project Objectives
• Restore a central role to ropeways in interpreting contemporary mountain landscapes.
• Create a georeferenced inventory and an interoperable database of the infrastructures.
• Analyse environmental, social and technological transformations in an integrated manner.
• Propose a replicable model for studying lightweight infrastructures in mountain contexts.
• Make all data and results openly available through the MAGOH platform.

Project Lead: Raffaele Voccia
E-mail: raffaele.voccia@phd.unipi.it