The First Traces of Occupation around Mizoën

Long before Mizoën became a village, people were already passing through the upper Romanche valley. The first people about whom we can speak with some degree of certainty were probably the Ligurians, an ancient people from Provence and Italian Liguria. They did not live here year-round: they came up in summer to hunt and went back down as soon as the season began to change. From around 1000 BCE, the area that would later become Oisans was probably crossed regularly. The Ligurians remain a rather mysterious people: they had no writing, but were well known to ancient authors such as Strabo, who described them as close to the Celts in their ways of life. The Mizoën region clearly lies north of their usual territory, suggesting that these passages were occasional and linked to mountain resources: hunting, high-altitude pastures, and the collection of mineral resources. It cannot be ruled out that an even older people frequented these slopes before them, but no solid evidence points in that direction. What is certain is that long before the first permanent hamlets, the ridges and valleys around Mizoën were already part of a space of movement and hunting known to human groups.