From a few days ago, when I was on my way to Cagliari to teach, I visited the extraordinary 4000-3650 BC site of Monte d’Accoddi, a Neolithic site in Northern Sardinia, completed to the present form around 3000 BC. Fabulously intriguing, and apparently the only ziggurat-style structure in the Western Mediterranean. This island has so many layers of history, in this case with a hint of Mesopotamia!#StandingStoneSunday#Sardegna#Sardinia#VisitingProfessor#unica
In the last few days, in between teaching & writing, I visited two more Nuraghic sites near Siddi dating from the Bronze Age, on a slight high plane above the fertile lowlands of Sardinia: one corridor-shaped (not the usual beehive dome style) at Sa Fogaia; one “giant’s tomb” called Sa Domu ‘e S’Orcu (i.e. house of the orcs!). Both practically empty in April & open to visitors to climb around and inside. Extraordinary places! #StandingStoneSunday#BronzeAge#History#Nuraghe#Sardinia#Sardegna
@sundogplanets Oh what fun! The first time I saw my neighbour hatch eggs in an incubator, it felt to me like growing animals from seed. We took five chicks home and it was marvelous to watch them grow. Enjoy your fuzzballs!
Want to see atmospheric yet often really mundane border photos? My online 🇨🇭🇫🇷 walking journal is moving here, as I’m enjoying this new online atmosphere. (I’m freezing new posts on Twatter & just ‘name-holding’ my account.)
Link to last post on one of the longer earlier threads: https://twitter.com/julietjfall/status/1571476764269871104?s=46&t=9RfIT2qARWZk8ZBEIES9Vw
Smile moment last night as we hopped into France to celebrate my lovely father-in-law’s 80th birthday, crossing by car at a place we have walked. I know all the slightest details of the borderline there, and the location of every stone. But politics also has daily rhythms that we forgot. When we wanted to go home, the border was shut. Ha! My daughter took one look at me and said “Ah, yes, Captain Geography…” 😂 I now have a new ironic title! #borders#geography#borderlines#politics#BorderWalk
Another Sunday exploring. No snow on the mountains, so the family isn’t skiing as much as some winters. Time to border hop!
We connected back with where the photo above — showing a border that closes at night — was taken, and tootled on. I love spotting all the infrastructure connected to the 🇨🇭🇫🇷 border. I now have an official list of it all from the Office du Patrimoine but it’s usually pretty legible. #borderWalk#geography#borders#slowResearch#visualEthnography
Lots of lovely border stones to keep me happy along the way (left bank 72 to 85 today), large and small, old and new(ish). Some easy to see, some requiring a phone app with gps to find in brambles, some needing repair, and some behind private fences (ahem…). #BorderWalk
We wore Wellington boots today, which was inspired, because it was muddy in places, we waded through the stream used to define the 🇨🇭🇫🇷 border for some stretches, and it was POURING with rain as we turned back to the car. Home for tea after another lovely walk seeing the superb and the mundane, following an (in)visible line. How much effort goes in to making us believe in the reality of the arbitrary territories we carve out! #BorderWalk#geography#borders#borderlands#sovereignty
It’s Sunday so off we go 🇨🇭🇫🇷boundary-walking, through fields & along the river Hermance. We walked from border stones 210 to 216 on the left bank, close to Veigy-Foncenex.
We started by stumbling upon a memorial in Crevy to some of the Righteous among the Nations, i.e. local people who helped Jewish refugees flee to Switzerland during WWII. (We reckon we’ve got about 5-6 stretches left to complete our tour, but we might stretch it out a bit!) #localHistory#borderWalk#geography#history#ww2
We joined up with the border & continued upstream, along the river Hermance. The border now runs down the middle of it here (here it was formerly along the talweg, i.e. following the deepest bit of the river bed). It is a picturesque and languid river meandering in a rural landscape punctuated by the usual border infrastructure: border stones, disused border guard buildings and rusting signs and fences. #borderWalk#geography#switzerland#visualMethods#visualEthnography#walking
Some of the river bank has been reinforced on the Swiss side. We wouldn’t want the pesky neighbours to steal bits of territory (Note almost springtime birdsong!)
We found ourselves in formerly Sardinian (!) territory as a splendid crested border stone across the 🇨🇭🇫🇷Hermance river reminded us that this was part of wider kingdoms in 1816, before the same stone was recarved when this area joined France, but maintaining the Sardinian royal flag. On the other side, the Geneva crest was spectacularly inaccurate, and as a result really rather cool. #borderWalk#history#borders
We then got into trouble traipsing across cross-border fields, ending up in someone’s garden, trying to accurately follow the line where it left the river. « We are just trying to follow the invisible borderline» not surprisingly comes across as rather odd to people who are wondering if the walkers wandering into their land are a) lost or b) burglars! To be fair, none of this really makes any sense, does it? Other than as geographical poetry of the absurd. #borderWalk#geography#borderlines
There is the most amazing blue stuff growing on my very old branches on a neglected and damp woodpile (slime / algae / moss / lichen?). I’ve never seen anything quite like it! (Northern Tuscany, Italy 🇮🇹 ) Not ideal for burning & heating my old house, but aesthetically pleasing. Ideas, anyone?
(No filter used, camera phone)