Historia de un monte compartido: un enfoque multi-disciplinar para el estudio de las formas históricas de apropiación de la tierra entre Zornoztegi y Udala

This paper aims to provide a historical overview for the historical understanding of the uplands shared by the village of Zornoztegi. These uplands are currently classified as “Mountains of Public Utility” and “Places of Community Importance”. This paper is organised in two parts. On one side, the long jurisdictional conflicts between the town of Salvatierra and the villages of Zuhatzu, Narbaiza and Luzuriaga, which resulted in the current administrative organisation and where the presence of the two deserted villages of Zornoztegi and Udala played a key role. On the other side, archaeological evidence of ancient uses lets us reconstruct the effective practice of rights and its material consequences. Based on archaeology, we will regressively read the current material evidence in order to describe the possible phases and different forms of appropriation. The combination of both types of analyses provides the opportunity to reconstruct practices of environmental resources management in the past more complex than those operating today. In this way, we will conclude that it is the complexity of these practices (as well as their jurisdictional value) what allowed constructing and keeping the natural interest of these lands, which nowadays are preserved under schemes for the protection of nature.