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When looking into land use and human agency in the modification of the landscape, the concepts of socio-economic opportunities vs. natural constraints is one of the key issues. In comparison with the modern world, past human communities relied much more upon local resources and a tight societal structure to better adapt to the conditions and changes in the surrounding environment. Therefore, in the study of prehistorical cultures land use is both a strong source of information about sustenance strategies and community behaviours and a subject potentially easier to model within a set of natural and social parameters. To this purpose, we investigated the settlement distribution patterns of Bronze Age structures of the Nuragic culture on the island of Sardinia (Italy) using spatial point pattern analysis. We investigated different covariates divided into natural (topography, water and geological resources) and cultural (type of structure, settlement hierarchy), alone and in combination, and looked at how each could explain the distribution of Nuragic sites.Several covariates from both natural and cultural groups show significant values, with the best representing models of pattern distribution coming from the combination of covariates from both groups. Aside from topographic parameters, distance from known ore deposits seems to have an impact on structure density. Among cultural covariates, there is a clear association between simple and complex megalithic structures (nuraghes). This pattern suggests the collation of smaller structures around larger settlements, either by the former emerging from the presence of the latter or vice versa. These findings offer new insight on the development and ways of life of the Nuragic society in their geographical context, and highlight how the relationship between the physical and the social aspects of human-landscape interactions is fundamentally interdependent. This approach could also represent a potential tool to compare to other Bronze Age and prehistorical communities.

Recent environmental studies and policies have recommended maintaining archaeological landscape features such as intercropping, agroforestry and cross-slope barriers (e.g. hedgerows, stone walls, earth banks) for their potential benefits to ecosystems. This study focuses on a portion of the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines coinciding with the municipality of Vetto d'Enza (commonly referred as Vetto), located on the right bank of the Enza River in the Man and the Biosphere UNESCO reserve (Emilia-Romagna region, Northern Italy). The main characteristics of this historic rural landscape trace their origin back to the Middle Ages at the period of the Great Countess Matilda of Canossa (10-11th century CE) and the area’s land management system appears to have remained largely unaltered until the end of the 19th-century CE. Among the most distinctive characteristics of this historic landscape are relicts of agroforestry practices (known as ‘alberata emiliana’) and well-preserved stone walls and earth banks that have been used extensively between steeply-sloping fields to delimit tenurial boundaries and to face agricultural terraces. Optically stimulated luminescence profiling and dating (OSL-PD) has been applied to date the sediments associated with earth banks, stone walls and agricultural terraces. The results provide secure construction dates during the Medieval Climate Anomaly - (MCA). This period (ca. 900–1350 CE) is arguably one of the most crucial moments of recent climate change that impacted societies, particularly in Europe. Above average temperatures allowed high-elevation settlements to persist throughout the MCA, though social trends played a large role in the conversion of uplands into an agro-pastoral landscape. These processes are particularly evident on the Apennine mountains, where mediaeval deforestation coincided with intensification of agriculture associated with development of monastic estates that exploited increasingly larger land holdings as well as new settlement patterns in higher-elevation defensible locations.

The geological substrate and its landforms, as main providers of natural resources, have a clear influence on landscape management practices The landscape evolution of the island of Sardinia (Italy) during the Holocene has strongly influenced the populations settled there, especially during the Bronze Age. We constructed a map of the land units in the southwestern corner of Sardinia and compared them with the distribution of known Bronze Age megalithic towers called nuraghes. Our aim is to understand which factors represent relevant criteria for settlement and try to infer possible causes.The vast majority of nuraghes are located in proximity to river networks at low and mid elevations. Most densely settled areas also show the highest landscape diversity with a variety of land units much higher than the rest of the territory. Another potential factor affecting the location choice for nuraghes is the presence of elevated outcrops, which provide the advantage of a raised position and of stable foundations. The interaction of human dispersal patterns with landscape features can provide useful information on the sustenance strategies of past communities. It can therefore be interesting to consider the combined effect of geodiversity and landscape diversity in order to build more accurate dispersal models.

Developing more sustainable agricultural systems represents a challenge and urgent global venture. A sustained collaboration among researchers from diverse fields, policymakers, and the public at large is necessary to deal with this complex global emergency. Landscape archaeology can actively contribute to this movement by exploring the interactions of social and environmental systems over long periods of time and generating insights for potential future applications. Environmental sustainability and historic landscape conservation are typically treated as two separate fields. Still, this research proposes a new way to embrace cultural and natural values as components of the same landscape management plans.Over the long term, rural activities have given rise to a wide variety of historic landscapes. Historic Landscape Characterisation (HLC) uses a qualitative but formalised method to map historic landscapes' chronological and spatial complexity. Each HLC study uses GIS to map 'historic landscape character types' (HLC types) based on distinctive characteristics which result from known historical processes. Meanwhile, in environmental studies, the diachronic land-use-land cover (LULC) analysis has helped illustrate how different anthropogenic activities have altered the soil erosion rate in specific areas. Modelling can provide a quantitative and consistent approach to estimating soil erosion under a wide range of conditions. GIS integration with the RUSLE (Revisited Universal Soil Loss Equation) model has been applied to estimate soil loss at a regional scale. It has resulted in implementing soil management and conservation practices to reduce soil erosion in fragile ecosystems. In previous HLC studies, LULC has been evaluated from the perspective of cultural heritage. In contrast, RUSLE modellers have used it as a proxy for the LULC of an area (i.e. absence or presence of tree canopy) and its effect on soil erosion. This study proposes an innovative methodology that combines both the historical/cultural and the environmental values of LULC to inform the development of a model to evaluate the increasing/decreasing soil erosion rate. From a cultural heritage point of view, the diachronic analysis of historical features (mapped as HLC types) informs understanding of the LULC, which characterised a landscape. At the same time, these features had an impact on local soil erosion rates. In this study, the HLC types have been employed to define the C and P factors, the two most challenging factors to be determined in the RUSLE equation. In literature, the C factor is usually derived from automatic satellite detection (e.g. CORINE), resulting in a low detailed characterisation of the LULC types, especially in the case of local agricultural activities. Conversely, the P factor is often taken equal to 1 because of the lack of geospatial data about the conservative practices adopted regionally (e.g. occurrence of terraced systems, hedgerows or contour ploughing). The methodology proposed has been tested in the Tuscan - Emilian Apennines historical landscape (Vetto - Italy) with the aims to assess: i) how the changes in the LULC in the past 70 years impacted the soil erosion rate, and ii) which HLC types perform better in term of soil erosion mitigation.

Fluvial environments represent complex human-water systems, as floodplains have always been among the most suitable environments for human subsistence. In this paper, we present one of the first at...

The interaction of human dispersal patterns with landscape features can in many cases provide useful information on the sustenance strategies of past communities. Mapping the present landscape is a necessary step in recognizing the nature, impact, and diffusion of the processes which drive the behaviour of past populations and modify palaeolandscapes. We constructed a map of the land units in the southwestern corner of Sardinia and compared them with the distribution of known Bronze Age megalithic towers called nuraghes. The vast majority of nuraghes are near the plains or at mid elevations close to the river network, in areas with the highest landscape diversity. The occurrence of nuraghes also seems to be related to elevated outcrops giving the advantage of a raised position and stable foundations. Denudation processes, Late Holocene sea level rise, and anthropogenic disturbance seem to be the most important factors driving changes in the palaeolandscape.

The necessity of sustainable development for landscapes has emerged as an important theme in recent decades. Current methods take a holistic approach to landscape heritage and promote an interdisciplinary dialogue to facilitate complementary landscape management strategies. With the socio-economic values of the natural and cultural landscape heritage increasingly recognised worldwide, remote sensing tools are being used more and more to facilitate the recording and management of landscape heritage. Satellite remote sensing technologies have enabled significant improvements in landscape research. The advent of the cloud-based platform of Google Earth Engine has allowed the rapid exploration and processing of satellite imagery such as the Landsat and Copernicus Sentinel datasets. In this paper, the use of Sentinel-2 satellite data in the identification of palaeo-riverscape features has been assessed in the Po Plain, selected because it is characterized by human exploitation since the Mid-Holocene. A multi-temporal approach has been adopted to investigate the potential of satellite imagery to detect buried hydrological and anthropogenic features along with Spectral Index and Spectral Decomposition analysis. This research represents one of the first applications of the GEE Python API in landscape studies. The complete FOSS-cloud protocol proposed here consists of a Python code script developed in Google Colab which could be simply adapted and replicated in different areas of the world, 33 pages, 10 figures, 2 tables

Located along the Tigris River in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI), the Mosul Dam reservoir is the second biggest dam of the Near East, and represents an important water storage for local human activities. The Dam was built between 1981 and 1988 north of the village of Eski Mosul; along this part of the Tigris River several archaeological sites were inundated. Analysis of historical images derived from Declassified Corona satellite acquired between December 1967 and August 1968 reveals seasonal changes of the Tigris riverbed, shifting across the hydrological year from meandering to anastomosing. The geomorphological mapping was carried out on the December 1967 and. in August 1968, Corona images were taken, in order to estimate the modification of several fluvial geomorphological elements such as floodplain and point, middle and longitudinal bars. Here, such evidence is compared with Landsat data collected between the 1990ies and today, in order to detect the first phases of filling of the basin and the control of inherited Tigris channel belt over the reservoir. Moreover, we also noticed an influence of the ancient Tigris course on is recent insertion into the lake. Our work permitted to reconstruct the ancient fluvial landscape below the Mosul Dam Lake, and its evolution in response to seasonal variation of the discharge.

The necessity of sustainable development for landscapes has emerged as an important theme in recent decades. Moreover, past landscape reconstruction enables a better understanding of human resilience to climatic and environmental changes in different periods and locations, and illustrates examples of sustainable development in the past. Free and open-source (FOSS) datasets of satellite imagery offer considerable opportunities for landscape heritage stakeholders both for recording and monitoring activities. In this research, a completely FOSS-cloud procedure to enhance the detection of palaeo-landscape features is presented. Sentinel - 2 satellite imagery has been retrieved in the Google Earth Engine dataset collection and analysed through a Python script code realized in Google Colaboratory. A multi-temporal approach has been adopted to investigate the potential of satellite imagery to detect buried features along with Spectral Index (i.e., RGB, False Short Wave Infrared Colour and Bare Soil Index) and Spectral Decomposition analysis (i.e., Hue, Saturation and Value, Tasselled Cap Transformation and Principal Component Analysis). This procedure has been tested in the Po Plain (Northern Italy), chosen because it is characterized by human-landscape interaction since the Mid-Holocene. Thanks to its complex settlement and land-management history, the Po Plain represents an ideal laboratory to assess the potentiality of satellite imagery to enhance riverscapes’ palaeo-features. The outputs obtained can be visualized directly in the Google Colaboratory browser or downloaded via Google Drive for further graphical applications or spatial analysis. The buried features detected have been checked through the available geomorphological and archaeological literature; published case studies interpreting the occurrence of buried features served as a benchmark to validate the script code developed. This research represents one of the first applications of the GEE Python API in landscape studies. The main advantages of this procedure consist of: i) being FOSS, all the software used here are open-licensed; ii) working in cloud, no powerful hardware is necessary to run the script code; iii) high adaptability, changing the ROI is possible to calculate SI and SD outputs for any area of the world; iv) very basic coding skills are required to adapt the code to a ROI with different environmental characteristics. The development of FOSS-cloud procedures could support the identification, conservation and management of cultural and natural heritage anywhere around the world. In remote areas or where local heritage is threatened as a result of political instability, climate change or other factors, FOSS-cloud protocols can facilitate the application of new scientific methods and enable the dissemination of and access to scientific information.

Monumental funerary landscapes are paramount representations of the relationship between environment and superstructural human behavior. Their formation sometimes requires millennia and they cover wide territories, often adding up to complex palimpsests of monuments belonging to different time periods. In this regard, the funerary landscape of the semi-arid foothill region of Kassala (Eastern Sudan) represents a solid example. Therein, a comprehensive geoarchaeological investigation conducted by means of field survey and remote sensing allowed the creation of a regional geomorphological base-map and a dataset of funerary monuments. The latter comprises several thousand raised stone-built tombs spanning from the early first millennium AD clusters of tumuli (belonging to the pan-African traditions) to regionally exclusive variants of medieval Islamic funerary architecture (qubbas). Funerary monuments are found as eye-catching scatters of hundreds of elements along the foothills of the many rocky outcrops dotting the pediplain of the western periphery of the Eritrean Highlands. In this study, the two categories of monuments were not considered as separate burialscapes, but rather examined as a unique, diachronic funerary landscape in its relationship with the geological and geomorphological settings and constraints. Point Pattern Analysis (PPA) was employed to determine the main environmental drivers of their locations on a regional scale, as well as to assess the existence of superstructural factors acting on their aggregation at the local scale. Our results strongly suggest the presence of a geological/environmental/societal synthesis underlying the choice of monuments’ location: at the regional scale, the pattern follows a precise set of rules residing in the concomitant presence of stable, gently rolling slopes and available metamorphic rock slabs; at the local scale, the clustering is heavily conditioned by superstructural dynamics that most likely reside in kinship and collective social memory of local Beja people. We suggest that the creation of the funerary landscape of Eastern Sudan is the result of a repeated and well coded social behavior of the Beja people, semi-nomadic cattle breeders known to have inhabited the region since “time immemorial”. Despite their mobile lifestyle and cultural contact with other North African and Arabic cultures, the monumental palimpsest portrays how the funerary habits of this millennia-old society persisted almost undisturbed, valuing location and kinship over external influences.

The Terramare civilization included hundreds of banked and moated villages, located in the alluvial plain of the Po River of northern Italy, and developed between the Middle and the Recent Bronze Ages (XVI-XII cent. BC). This civilization lasted for over 500 years, collapsing at around 1150 years BC, in a period marked by a great societal disruptionin the Mediterranean area. The timing and modalities of the collapse of the Terramare Bronze Age culture are widely debated, and a combined geoarchaeological and palaeoclimatic investigation – the SUCCESSO-TERRA Project –is shading new light on this enigma. The Terramare economy was based upon cereal farming, herding, and metallurgy; settlements were also sustained by a well-developed system for the management of water and abundant wood resources. They also established a wide network of commercial exchange between continental Europe and the Mediterranean region.The SUCCESSO-TERRA Project investigated two main Bronze Age sites in Northern Italy:(i) the Terramara Santa Rosa di Poviglio, and (ii) the San Michele di Valestra site, which is a coeval settlement outside the Terramare territory, but in the adjoining Apennine range. Human occupation at San Michele di Valestra persisted after the Terramare crisis and the site was settled with continuity throughout the whole Bronze Ages, up to the Iron Age. The combined geoarchaeological, palaeoclimatic, and archaeobotanical investigation on different archaeological sites and on independent archives for climatic proxies (offsite cores and speleothems) highlights the existence of both climatic and anthropic critical factors triggering a dramatic shift of the landuse of the Terramare civilization. The overexploitation of natural resources became excessive in the late period of the Terramare trajectory, when also a climatic change occurred. A fresh speleothem record for the same region suggests the occurrence of a short-lived period of climatic instability followed by a marked peak of aridity. The unfavourable concomitance between human overgrazing and climatic-triggered environmental pressure, amplified the on-going societal crisis, likely leading to the breakdown of the Terramare civilization in the turn of a generation.

In fluvial environments, alluvial geomorphological features had a huge influence on settlement strategies during the Holocene. However, a few projects investigate this topic through quantitative and question-driven analyses of the human-landscape correlation. The Po Valley (N Italy) – located between the Mediterranean regions and continental Europe – is as a key area for the investigation of environmental and cultural influences on settlement strategies since prehistoric times. For instance, the transition from Roman to Medieval times represented a crucial moment for the reorganisation of human settlement strategies in the Po Valley; the process was mainly driven by climate changes and socio-political factors. Spatial Point Pattern Analysis (SPPA) was here employed to provide a solid statistical assessment of these dynamics in the two historical phases. A point pattern (PP) corresponds to the location of spatial events generated by a stochastic process within a bounded region. The density of the PP is proportional to the intensity of the underlying process. The intensity, in turn, can be constant within the region or spatially variable, thus influencing the uniformity of distribution of spatial events. SPPA provides powerful techniques for the statistical analysis of PP data that consist of a complete set of locations of archaeological sites/findings within an observation window. The use of spatial covariates enables the investigation of environmental and non-environmental factors influencing the spatial homogeneity of the point process. Archaeologists have increasingly analyzed such datasets to quantify the characteristics of observed spatial patterns with the aims of deriving hypotheses on the underlying processes or testing hypotheses derived from archaeological theory. The aim of this paper is to assess whether a shift in water management strategies between the Roman and Medieval periods influenced the spatial distribution of settlements, and to evaluate the relative importance of agricultural suitability over flood risks in each historical phase. In particular, the variability settlement patterns between Roman and Medieval phases has been assessed against two related proxies for alluvial geomorphology and agricultural suitability: flood hazard and soil texture. The SPPA performed shows that Roman and Medieval settlement patterns mirror two different human responses to the geomorphological dynamics of the area. Roman land- and water-management were able to minimize the flood hazard, to drain the floodplain and organize a complex land use on different soil types. In the Medieval period, the alluvial geomorphology of the area, characterised by wide swampy meadows and frequent flood events, affected the spatial organisation of settlement, which privileged topographically prominent positions. Social and cultural dynamics played a crucial role in responding to alluvial geomorphological environmental challenges in different times.

Results of an extended survey on the production and quality of sewage sludge produced in Italy are herewith reported and discussed. Data are relevant to 2015. They were provided by 84 Italian water utilities responsible for municipal wastewater treatment serving approximately 35 million persons. Total production was estimated at about 395,000 t dry solids/year, of which 9.9% is used in agriculture without further treatments, 26.4% is sent to external plants for compost production, 5.6% is sent to external plant for production of a soil conditioner called ‘chalk of defecation’, 17.2% is disposed to landfill, and 5.9% is sent to incineration or co-incineration plants. The rest (35%) is sent to external sludge centres for further treatments (manly chemical and physical processes) before recovery/disposal. Regarding chemical characterization the following parameters were investigated: TOC, total nitrogen, total phosphorus, potassium, arsenic, cadmium, copper, nickel, lead, zinc, mercury, total chromium, chromium VI, selenium, hydrocarbons C10–C40, sum of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, sum of polychlorinated biphenyls, sum of polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins/dibenzo-p-furanes (toxic equivalent) salmonella, faecal coliforms, sulphur, sum of absorbable halogenated organic compounds, nonylphenol and nonylphenolethoxylates with one or two ethoxy groups, and di(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate. All the parameters showed that the quality of Italian sewage sludge is consistent with a typical sludge in Europe, Asia and America and the maximum concentrations of pollutants are well below the fixed standards of the European Directive 86/278 and the third draft of the European Commission's Working Document on Sludge.

Historical documents represent a significant part of the world cultural heritage and need to be preserved from physical deformation due to ageing. The restoration of fragile documents requires economic resources that are often limited to only preserve the integrity of exceptional and highly valuable historical records. On the other hand, regeneration of ancient documents in digital form is a useful way to preserve them regardless of the material they are made of. In addition, the digitization of historical cartography allows creating a valuable dataset for a variety of GIS applications as well as spatial and landscape studies. Nonetheless, historical maps are usually deformed, and a contact-scanning process could damage them because this method requires planar positioning of the map. In this regard, photogrammetry has been used successfully as a non-invasive method to digitize historical documentation. The purpose of this research is to assess a low-cost and highly flexible strategy to digitize historical maps and documents through digital photogrammetry using low-cost commercial off-the-shelf sensors. This methodology allows training a wider audience of cultural heritage operators in digitizing historic records with a millimeter-level accuracy.

Fluvial environments have always played a crucial role in human history. The necessity of fertile land and fresh water for agriculture has led populations to settle in floodplains more frequently than in other environments. Floodplains are complex human&ndash, water systems in which the mutual interaction between anthropogenic activities and environment affected the landscape development. In this paper, we analyzed the evolution of the Central Po Plain (Italy) during the Medieval period through a multi-proxy record of geomorphological, archaeological and historical data. The collapse of the Western Roman Empire (5th century AD) coincided with a progressive waterlogging of large floodplain areas. The results obtained by this research shed new light on the consequences that Post-Roman land and water management activities had on landscape evolution. In particular, the exploitation of fluvial sediments through flood management practices had the effect of reclaiming the swamps, but also altered the natural geomorphological development of the area. Even so, the Medieval human activities were more in equilibrium with the natural system than with the later Renaissance large-scale land reclamation works that profoundly modified the landscape turning the wetland environment into the arable land visible today. The analysis of fluvial palaeoenvironments and their relation with past human activities can provide valuable indications for planning more sustainable urbanized alluvial landscapes in future.

This paper presents the results of the geoarchaeological study of a medieval motte known in historical documents as “Castrum Popilii” (Poviglio, Northern Italy). The Castrum Popilii motte, for its particular environmental characteristics, represents an exceptional case study for the Early Medieval Age in Po Valley. In 1989 an archaeological rescue excavation revealed an exceptionally well-preserved stratigraphic sequence at the northern side of the Santo Stefano church. The study of the archaeological materials and thin soil sections collected during this campaign, integrated with geoarchaeological observations, allowed the reconstruction of the natural and anthropogenic processes involved in the formation of the Santo Stefano di Poviglio stratigraphy sequence. The area also referred to as “Santo Stefano di Poviglio”, exposed the eastern limit of the medieval motte, characterizes by a sequence of occupation deposits, living floors, and wooden structural remains dated between the late 9th and the 11th centuries AD. The micromorphological study of this archaeological site led to developing a new hypothesis about the use of lime-based plaster in the construction of domestic living floors in a rural early medieval village in Central Po Plain. The sealing of the sequence due to the construction of a stone stronghold in the 15th century, combined with waterlogging, preserved the deposit from reworking by bioturbation and later human activities. On the other hand, water stagnation influenced a series of post-depositional migration and accumulation of iron–manganese and phosphatic features. The geoarchaeological tools applied in this study allowed to maximize the data collected in a rescue situation in 1989 highlighting new information about the genesis and development of Castrum Popilii medieval motte.

International audience

In the Northern Apennines, significant modifications to the characteristic historical features of landscapes have occurred since the 1950s as agriculture declined in importance and villages were progressively depopulated. Today, European policies are promoting the repopulation of these regions to help preserve the cultural identity of territories and reduce demographic pressure inurban areas. Such initiatives increase the need for cultural and natural landscape management to be better integrated using interdisciplinary approaches. Sustainable landscape management is a dynamic process involving the formulation of strategies to underpin the preservation of landscape heritage and foster local development based on the values and opportunities provided by landscapes themselves. This study uses landscape archaeology and spatial statistics to provide insights into which parts of the historic landscape retain the greatest time-depth and which parts reflect the more recent radical change, enabling an understanding which goes beyond the basic spatial relationships between landscape components.

Funding: This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 890561, Historic Landscape and Soil Sustainability (HiLSS). Funding for fieldwork and analysis was provided through the TerraSAgE project (Terraces as Sustainable Agricultural Environments) from UKRI-Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC ref: AH/T000104/1). International policies and guidelines often highlight the divide between 'nature' and 'heritage' in landscape management, and the weakness of monodisciplinary approaches. This study argues that historic agricultural practices have played a key role in shaping today's landscapes, creating a heritage which affords opportunities for more sustainable landscape management. The paper develops a new interdisciplinary approach with particular reference to soil loss and degradation over the long term. It presents innovative methods for assessing and modelling how pre-industrial agricultural features can mitigate soil erosion risk in response to current environmental conditions. Landscape archaeology data presented through Historic Landscape Characterisation are integrated in a GIS-RUSLE model to illustrate the impact of varying historic land-uses on soil erosion. The resulting analyses could be used to inform strategies for sustainable land resource planning. Publisher PDF