After "Archaeology of the Alps 2021-2022", the editorial activity of the Archaeological Heritage Office of the Superintendence for Cultural Heritage of the Autonomous Province of Trento continues with the publication "Memory in the Ice - Archaeology of the Great War at Punta Linke", created to complement the exhibition of the same name underway at the Sas Underground Archaeological Space in Trento. The exhibition will run until 7 January 2024 at the Spazio Archeologico Sotterraneo S.A.S.S. in Piazza Cesare Battisti in the historic centre of the city of Trento.
The volume, edited by Franco Nicolis, archaeologist and director of the Archaeological Heritage Office, documents with photographs and texts the recovery interventions from the ice of the Ortles-Cevedale of the structures of the First World War, conducted by the Provincial Archaeological Heritage Office together with a multidisciplinary team at the site of Punta Linke at 3,629 meters above sea level. The book is accompanied by the DVD "Punta Linke. La memoria", the documentary film by Paolo Chiodarelli that traces the phases of the research.
The publication presents the history and the project of recovery of the site through short chapters and a rich iconographic apparatus that intends to be emblematic of the work carried out at high altitudes to safeguard the testimonies of the First World War, an event that in its tragedy marked the territory of Trentino. The volume helps to understand the role of the archaeology of the Great War which, as the curator Franco Nicolis writes in the introductory text, "does not intend to rewrite the chapters of history, what archaeologists can do is to open a window into the space of memory and document small contexts that can provide important information on the life and death of soldiers forgotten by great history."
Punta Linke is one of the highest places of memory in Europe, an extraordinary testimony of what was the highest front of the Great War located on the border between the Kingdom of Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The site, which was covered by ice for nearly a century after the end of the conflict, emerged as a result of climate change in recent years. The delicate recovery work carried out by the Provincial Archaeological Heritage Office in collaboration with the "Pejo 1914-1918" Museum saved it from degradation. The war on the doorstep" which saw the intervention of geologists, mountain guides, restorers and volunteers. Investigated with an archaeological method, he returned the station of a cable car built by the Austro-Hungarians to connect Cogolo di Peio with Cima Vioz, Punta Linke and the "Coston delle barache brusade" and thus ensure supplies to those who guarded the front. Since 2014, in the summer, the site is open to visitors who from Peio reach the Vioz "Mantua" Refuge and then Punta Linke where it is possible to walk through the tunnel torn from the ice that has imprisoned it for a hundred years, enter spaces and environments where soldiers and cable car operators were forced to live in extreme conditions and cast their gaze on the immensity of the Forni glacier.
