Walker - 1967 - A geography of Italy

economic planning than to the vehemence of local opinion) is used to support a
petro-chemical plant at Pisticci. The two largest towns. Potenza (44,000) and
Matera (38,000), are administrative and agricultural in function. Until it was
rehoused by the Cassa a large part o f Matera’s population lived in cave dwellings
cut in the edge o f a Cretaceous limestone platform - a fact which was often
quoted as a measure of the backwardness of the Mezzogiorno.
V[e] Calabria
THE SOUTH
The landscapes o f Calabria are as numerous and varied as those o f Apulia and
Basilicata are few and monotonously repetitive. This diversity is most attractively
displayed along the coastlands where the intimacy o f mountain and sea recalls
the homeland o f the Greek settlers who first colonized the area in the eighth and
seventh centuries bc. Thanks to the nature o f the relief, the variety o f climate is
equally striking; on the sparsely populated Sila plateau, where Mediterranean
Man was never really at home, the snow may lie for two or three months, while on
the coast, particularly the Tyrrhenian coast, the mildness o f the winters and the
almost complete absence o f severe frosts permit the growth o f the most sensitive
Mediterranean crops.
The northern barrier o f Calabria is provided by the last o f the Apennine limestone
massifs which overlook the Crati lowlands from the S caloñe Pass to the
Pollino group. With their wooded summits and their sterile karstic flanks they
differ little from their more northerly counterparts, but the flourishing oasis
along the Cascile valley above Castrovillari is indebted to their springs (pi. xixb).
South of a line joining the Scalone Pass and the mouth o f the Crati the relief
of Calabria is dominated by two crystalline Hercynian horsts linked by the low
isthmus o f Catanzaro. Like the limestone massifs further north their summits
emerged as islands from the Pliocene sea the sediments o f whose bed, subsequently
uplifted with the rest o f the area, are exposed on the flanks o f the horsts.
The whole area, continuing into north-east Sicily, is seismically unstable,
especially in the fault zone occupied by the Straits o f Messina; the earthquakes
of 1783 and 1908 were particularly destructive. The most northern o f the blocks
is unequally divided by the tectonic trench o f the upper Crati. T o the west lies
the Catena Costiera composed very largely o f mica-schists, impermeable below
but frequently masked by a deep unstable layer o f weathered debris. The steep
sides o f the range have been scored by a succession o f torrents (fiumare) whose
violence is fed by a seasonal and disastrously erratic rainfall averaging over
1800 mm. Along the Tyrrhenian coast these torrents have built a chain o f small
alluvial plains and detritus cones whose exuberant arboriculture, irrigated
where possible, contrasts with the intervening expanses o f rock and macchia.
The forests o f oak and chestnut, often in fine stands, which clothe the main
ridge have a vital conservational rôle. On the seaward slope they give way to
terraced olives at about 700m but on the opposite side they extend down as far as
the dissected Tertiary hills which flank the Crati trench.
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