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The last decades have resulted in a strong renewal of the academic interest of the common lands, even more in a context of revaluation of the rural world and the local scale as alternatives to the globalizing process. A renewal which has motivated different ways for approaching the common lands, including the emergence of an archaeology of the common lands, able to generate very strong narratives on the management and appropriation processes as well as their dismantling through the long duration. In this paper we will present, through three case studies located in southern Europe (the Basque Country, Galicia and Italy), a series of reflections on the potentialities and limits of an archaeological approach to the common lands, pinpointing the capacity of material culture to reveal the multifunctional and multitemporal character of these spaces. Spaces that, as we will argue in the text, will play a central role in the future of current rural societies.

This essay addresses the theme of the ambiguity of the commons by interweaving research methods and analytical tools from multiple disciplines. It focuses on a case study from the Ligurian Apennines featuring two communities engaged in a centuries-old dispute over ownership of collective resources. The authors examine clues to changes in the environmental resource management practices of woodlands and pastures, with particular attention to those concerning charcoal and hay production on common lands. Their aim is to identify changes in access rights, and thus in the organisation of local communities, by examining the relationships between the social actors and their environmental resources, in order to correlate the material evidence of the occupation, appropriation and use of common lands (fences, charcoal kilns, and wetlands, etc.) to variations in local ownership and usage practices, including those resulting from administrative reforms introduced by the central authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]