The paper presents a case study of visits to World War I battlefield sites (monuments, sacred zones, cemeteries) on the Soča/Isonzo front. The focus is on acknowledging the motivations related to the ...construction of monuments and the role and interest of the Italian authorities when influencing and encouraging these visits. The paper will also attempt to determine the importance of this practice in the case of memorial sites at the Soča/Isonzo front. Additional issues addressed in the paper include how common visits to these sites were in the interwar period, who the primary visitors were and if and how this activity resonated in the tourism sector, and how tourism reflected the Italian national narrative in the contested border region.
This year, the centennial anniversary of the Isonzo Front outbreak is being remembered. Among many exhibitions to commemorate the beginning of the greatest conflict in the Slovenian territory, a ...photography collection of the Austro-Hungarian military medicine was presented in the Faculty of Medicine and the University Medical Centre Ljubljana. In words and pictures, the accents of the medical activities of that time were described.
This article explores three recent representations of the First World War – specifically of the Isonzo Front – in Slovenian popular music. It considers the works of Rodoljubac, Bakalina, and Bratko ...Bibič. These musicians and music collectives share a connection to the historical region of the Isonzo Front. The article investigates how these musicians’ knowledge of place informed their compositions. Four ways of knowing a place are identified, distributed to varying degrees among the musicians: absorbing locally shared narratives about a place, engagement with landscapes and the environment, personal memories, and analyzing and reconsidering the place. The article contributes to the literature on the involvement of music in the production of place by examining the multitude of ways of knowing a place.
One of the greatest, most tragic, and largely overlooked campaigns during the First World War was the Isonzo Front, which ran through an area inhabited by an ethnic Slovenian majority and, in the ...part along the southern reaches of the Isonzo River, by Italians, Friulians, and Germans. The region was part of the pact between the Triple Entente and Italy, which declared war on Austria-Hungary in 1915. This was a territory that is believed to have been visited by Dante Alighieri and that was described by Ernest Hemingway in one of his novels. This issue of Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore is dedicated to the First World War – specifically, the use and production of cultural heritage during that period – with an emphasis on a lesser-known front in the “non-West”. According to John R. Schindler, the reasons for neglecting and forgetting this front, which involved over a million soldiers, over 300,000 of whom were killed in battle, lie in the fact that “for most English-language historians, battles and campaigns of the Great War that did not happen on the Western Front or involve English-speaking troops apparently are not worth exploring” (Schindler 2001: xiii). Consequently, all the horrors of war and human victims have also been forgotten alongside it. The area that became part of Italy after the war has become the subject of various heritage discourses, strategies, and practices of the winners (i.e., Italians) and the losers (i.e., non-Italians).
The First World War brought many changes to everyday life and came as a surprise to many contemporaries. The territory of today’s Slovenia mostly belonged to the 3rd Austro-Hungarian Army Corps. More ...than 160,000 soldiers were mobilized in these recruiting districts. The fact that the labor of at least five people was needed to provide for just one soldier on the frontline sums up how the hinterland was connected with the front. The fatalities among the soldiers were extremely high. During the first five offensives, the positions of the front were basically unchanged despite a large number of casualties. The Italian conquest of Gorica/Gorizia in August 1916 was followed by a new wave of refugees and the retreat of the Austro-Hungarian Army from the Doberdob/Doberdo Plateau to the new defense line in the Karst region. The atmosphere in the hinterland was affected by a feeling of scarcity and growing discontent. With the successful breakthrough in 1917 (the battle of Caporetto), which shifted the front to the Piave River, the Isonzo Front drew the attention of military strategists and became known internationally. At the end of October 1918, Austria-Hungary collapsed and new states emerged on its territory, among them the State of the Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs. Thus the stories of the soldiers and the memory of the fallen remained within the family circle and local cemeteries, far from national celebrations, out of the collective memory of the new state. Later, the memory of the Second World War and the postwar revolution also completely obscured the memory of the years 1914–1918. A characteristic feature of Slovenia in the period after the Second World War was that the first museum collections were created by private collectors, who collected material remains of the war on the trackless Soča landscape.
The Isonzo river mouth has been the source of Hg in the Gulf of Trieste (northern Adriatic sea) since the sixteenth century, making this shallow basin one of the most contaminated marine areas in the ...length of time and amount of metal accumulated. The occurrence and behaviour of total Hg (range 0.064–30.38 μg g
−1; average 5.04 μg g
−1; median 3.10 μg g
−1,
n=80) and related size fractions in sediments of this coastal area were investigated in detail. The relationship between total Hg and the fine silt-clay (< 16 μm) fraction has provided information on the hydrological and mineralogical fractionation process affecting this element, when compared to other heavy metals associated with fluvial inputs. Mercury contents are very high along the littoral zone of the northern (Italian) sector where this metal is present in detrital form (cinnabar) in sandy-silty sediments near the river mouth and the surrounding beaches. Within the sediments belonging to the Gulf area, Hg is bound either to fine particles or adsorbed onto the surface of clay minerals and/or partially complexed by colloids and organic matter. Recent accumulation of Hg in a 70 cm long
210Pb dated core, collected in the central part of the Gulf, was also compared to other heavy metals (Fe, Cr, Cu, Mn, Ni and Zn). A preliminary estimate of Hg enrichment shows that the first 50 cm of sediment in the central sector of the Gulf of Trieste are noticeably contaminated, reaching a maximum of up to 25-fold above the proposed natural regional background of 0.17 μg g
−1. The vertical trend is well correlated to historical data of Hg extraction activity at the Idrija mine.
A group of Bronze Age whetstones from protohistoric hill forts, locally called castellieri, of eastern Friuli Venezia Giulia (north‐eastern Italy) has been studied using different techniques, ...including non‐destructive methods such as X‐ray computed microtomography and portable X‐ray fluorescence, in order to characterize the raw material and define its origin. The obtained results suggest that small pebbles of reddish subarkose and quartz arenites collected from the gravel deposits of the Isonzo River, perhaps deriving from Val Gardena Formation outcrops, were exploited for the production of the studied artefacts during the Bronze Age. These data complement our knowledge about the lithic raw materials exploitation strategies during the ancient phase of the castellieri culture, almost exclusively based on local rock types.
The classical Karst transboundary aquifer is a limestone plateau of 750 km2 that extends from Brkini hills in Slovenia to Isonzo River in Italy. For 20 years, and especially in the last two years, ...the Mathematic and Geosciences Department of Trieste University has run a monitoring project in order to better understand the groundwater hydrodynamics and the relation between the fracture and conduit systems. A total of 14 water points, including caves, springs and piezometers are monitored and temperature, water level and EC data are recorded. Two sectors are highlighted: the southeastern sector mainly influenced by the sinking of the Reka River, and a northwestern sector connected to the influent character of the Isonzo River. Water table fluctuations are significant, with risings of > 100 m. During floods most of the circuits are under pressure, and only a comparative analysis of water levels, temperature and EC permits a precise evaluation of the water transit times in fractured and/or karstified volumes.
The role of suspended particulate matter (SPM) as an important carrier of mercury (Hg) dispersed into the Gulf of Trieste and in the adjacent Grado lagoon (Northern Adriatic Sea) was studied during a ...high Isonzo River inflow and the resulting river plume formation. Despite the fact that extreme flood events are rare during the year, they account for most of the PHg influx (37–112
ng
L
−1) into the Gulf of Trieste. When the river plume is diverted to the SW under the influence of an E–NE wind, the tidal flux acts as a “transport belt” carrying the PHg, mostly inorganic, into the Grado lagoon. A preliminary estimation indicates that the amount of PHg entrapped in the lagoon basin following a tidal semi-cycle accounts for 1.4
kg/12
h, which corresponds to about 49% of the total Hg carried by the tidal flow. These findings should be considered in future remediation strategies in the lagoon environment.
L’autore ha studiato a fondo, a cominciare dagli anni ’90, la toponomastica e l’antica antroponimia del Territorio di Monfalcone. Dopo la pubblicazione della II edizione dell’opera (P 2010) le ...ricerche sono continuate e hanno sempre confermato quei primi risultati. In pratica questo angolo sud-orientale del Friuli rientrò almeno fino a tutto il sec. XV nella Slavia submersa, con una maggioranza di abitanti slavofoni ed una minoranza parlante un dialetto friulano che si situava morfologicamente fra quello centrale e le antiche e scomparse parlate friulaneggianti di Trieste e Muggia. Nell’articolo si ripresentano brevemente molti nomi di persone e di luoghi di Pieris e Begliano (oggi Comune di S. Canzian d’Isonzo), con alcuni nuovi dati emersi ultimamente: per esempio sull’attuale località Isola Morosini (nel sec. XV Otoch) che apparteneva in età medievale all’Abbazia benedettina di Moggio. Viene rivista anche l’etimologia del nome della località di Begliano, lasciata in sospeso nei lavori precedenti fra l’opzione predialistica romana (*Bellius) e quella paleoslava (*Beljan o *Beljani); assegnando questo toponimo allo strato linguistico slavo. Bisogna distinguere però questo strato sloveno medievale da uno successivo, rappresentato essenzialmente da nomi e soprannomi di persone immigrate nel Monfalconese fra la fine del sec. XV e il sec. XVII. Gente di origine balcanica (sclabonus sive bisiacus) che fuggiva dalle invasioni turche ed entrava in un angolo di Friuli soggetto a Venezia. I tre villaggi erano vicini all’antico traghetto (zopum) di Pieris sul fiume Isonzo e la parte finale dell’articolo è dedicata alla discussione sull’etimo del termine friulano çòp/zòpul ‘piroga’ (slov. dial. čupa), su cui era intervenuto uno scrittore di Trieste proponendo un’origine slovena. L’autore dell’articolo mostra invece come non si possa facilmente disgiungere il termine çop/zop da tutta una trafila di voci, ben attestate nell’area romanza del nord-est italiano (compresa la lingua dalmatica oggi estinta). Voci che sembrano tutte gravitare attorno al semantema “ceppo, legno scavato” e che potrebbero in ultima analisi essere di lontana origine prelatina.
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