the Neolithic from 5000 BC the cultivation of the land and the keeping of domestic animals indicate that people now lived a settled life in South Tyrol. The low mountain landscape in Villanders offered favourable conditions for this. The finds in the Plunacker archaeological zone in Villanders are among the most significant of this epoch in the whole of the Alps. Finds from the Neolithic on the alpine meadows of Villanders also provide evidence of the presence of men at higher levels, but allow no inference as to the use of the alpine meadow for agriculture in the narrower sense of the term. Finds from the Copper and Bronze Ages are indeed rare; however finds in the surrounding communities of Brixen/Bressanone, Saubach and Barbian/Barbiano do suggest that there was a continuous history of settlement. It is probable that mining had already begun and the copper extracted was sold to communities to the South; at Lake Garda and in the Pianura Padana. The Mediterranean influence on the Southern Alps can also be seen in the world of the intellect: writing on the Etruscan model was introduced and depiction of the gods resembled the Greek and Italian or Etruscan style. Roman times Roman times in what is today known as South Tyrol, begins at the latest with the Emperor Augustus (31 BC - 14 AD) and continues into the 5th and 6th centuries AD. The area around Villanders at that time was continuously settled, but still patchily. The only finds discovered to date were found on the Plunacker. Here the remains of a large and well appointed Roman villa were discovered. At that time the area between Ritten/Renon and Villanders lay in the border country between Trento/Tridentum, Noricum and Rhaetia, but it is impossible to be more precise, because we lack archaeological evidence. The Middle Ages As in other parts of South Tyrol there are very few traces in Villanders from the Early and High Middle Ages (approx. 500-1350 AD). However, it can be assumed that settlement continued, but as yet we have not been fortunate enough to find the evidence of the unbroken inhabitation of any farm from Late Antiquity up to the High Middle Ages. The Lords of Vilanders The title, the "Lords of Vilanders" denoted one of the most powerful noble clans in the Tyrol of the Middle Ages, with its home in Villanders. They were prosperous farmers, who