The northern Alps demonstrate a great singularity both in the varied nature of the territory as well as in the manner with which man adapted to this region and subjugated it to his needs. Facilitated by the disposition of the valleys and passes, transalpine communications rendered the mountain barrier pervious to trade and influences, particularly with the Italian versant. Five millennium were necessary in order that man fully established himself in the northern Alps. The advent of neolithisation (5300/5200 BC) affected only a few Mesolithic communities acculturated to the new way of life. It followed two major roads of entry: influences from Switzerland penetrated the northern region, which stopped between the latitudes of Chambery and Grenoble, while influences from the Midi extended a little more to the north. During the Middle Neolithic, the west of the interior massifs witnessed a veritable colonisation by Chasseans and Cortaillods. The latter did not cross south of the above mentioned limit: the province of Savoy was already differentiable from that of Dauphine. The conquest of the high Savoyard valleys to the east was accomplished from the Italian versant by Cortaillods coming from Valais and bringing Glis-Chamblandes cist type funeral rites with them. A homogeneous community of mountain dwellers occupied the regions straddling the border and exploited the 'green stone' necessary for the fabrication of polished axes which were widely utilised in south-eastern France, western Switzerland and Italy. In the third millennium, during the Late Neolithic, the northern Swiss influence and the southern Mediterranean influence once more became apparent, asserting even more strongly than before the Dauphine-Savoy difference. The introduction of bronze marks the end of the southern influence. The metallurgic centres and the civilisations that sustained them emanated from rhodanian Switzerland and Middle Europe. Power and novel techniques first imposed themselves through the diffusion of finished products and, later, by the expansion of ideas, of skills and/or peoples at the end of the Bronze Age. With the introduction of new metallurgic and ceramic techniques throughout the region in the 14th century BC, the former society of small rural Neolithic communities utterly disappeared. This change concurred with territorial organisation by the first 'princes' who controlled various productions as well as trade between western Europe and the Mediterranean world. Hallstatt groups, settling in the lowlands, became the masters of commerce and transalpine trade but allowed the Alpine populations to develop in the mountains. The Gauls later replaced them in controlling the territory, abandoning the use of the major alpine passes after their expulsion from the Po valley. The Alpine populations were bronzesmiths as of the very end of the Bronze Age in the Hautes-Alpes as well as during all of the Iron Age. Original techniques and cultural groups arose in each interior valley. The differences between the mountains and the plains endured for more than two millennium as was still demonstrated through popular arts and traditions less than a hundred years ago. The Protohistory of the Alps is marked by three major stages: neolithisation and the creation of a high altitude population in the Savoy, associated with the production of polished axes, during the fifth millennium; the generalisation of bronze at the end of the second millennium; and the incorporation of the Alps into the European economy, which favoured the birth of an original Alpine civilisation, during the seventh century BC. These stages were not merely accompanied by technological changes but also by changes of mentality, of social structure and of territorial control.
