Corsican Bronze Age fortifications: settlements, economic centers, and/or power places?

The fortified settlements (casteddi) of the Corsican Bronze Age are among the most defining elements of the island's protohistoric landscape. Their monumentality alone, characterized by massive architecture and remarkable elevations, justifies their omnipresence in popular traditions and historiography. Roger Grosjean, took a keen interest in these settlements from the moment he arrived on the island in the mid-1950s, conducting excavations on them until his death in 1975. After him, the casteddi were no longer seen as a homogeneous whole but instead according to their specific characteristics, even if attempts at synthesis and broader considerations sometimes reveal, depending on the researcher, tendencies that focus either on their defensive features or, conversely, on their economic and productive aspects. Today, the interpretation of fortified sites is primarily based on a better chronological understanding, allowing for an evolutionary reading of the social processes they embody.