It is maybe one of the last active sectors of the industrial archaeology of which the entire area of the Serras was rich in a non remote past. In fact, within living memory, the tens of coal production sites scattered in the thick vegetation of Serra’s mountains are still remembered.

The sector employed tens of families that handed down from father to son the skills of the choice of wood and of the composition of the "scarazzi" till the final phase of the realization of coal.

After centuries, still today, in Serra’s woods, it is possible to individuate the smoking "scarazzi".
The sheaves of wood piled and covered with wet straw and soil, that allow the complete dehydration and the full baking of the wood and that will bring forth the carbonisation.

It is a long and patient procedure that must be followed for approximately twenty days, while around ten are necessary for the geometric piling of the wood that must be selected with the bigger pieces in the middle and ending with the thinner branches.

It is, precisely, the geometric form of the “scarazzo” that mostly impresses the visitor; a perfect dome with a circular base that can go beyond six metres in altitude and that before being covered with earth resembles the houses of certain cultures distant from us.

The activity of the carbon merchants is, certainly, of sacrifice, without pause and without temporal knowledge to the point that even a night shift is necessary and therefore it involves the whole family.

The carbon merchant, in fact, after having set the fire inside the "scarazzu" has to make sure this doesn’t die out because otherwise it would be difficult to relight it and he has to make holes all over the sheaf in order to allow the outflow of the smoke.

And it is, precisely, the colour of the smoke that indicates the "state of health" of the "scarazzu" and that draws the coal merchant’s attention to the necessity to further stoke or diminish the fire inside for an optimal baking.

Hence, amid smoke and black powder, thirty long days go by before the carbon, ready by now, can reach in the jute sacks the furthest destinations.
Today, around Serra’s mountains exist eight carbonisation sites fully functioning and all run by families, sites that remain as evidence of an

activity that is disappearing but that has been for centuries an important point of reference for the local economy.