Archeologia rurale dell'Appennino Ligure. Continuità, discontinuità e abbandoni di pratiche di gestione e condivisione delle risorse ambientali.

The Ligurian Apennines, and in particular the Antola-Tigullio Inland Area, has been the subject of much multidisciplinary research conducted by the Genoa University since the 1970s, devoted to the history of the agrarian, forestry and pastoral landscape, as well as the history and geography of peopling and rural settlement. These geographic-historical investigations stimulated debates on the geography of peopling and the history of material culture, involving historians, geographers, naturalists and archaeologists, fostering an intellectual ferment that contributed to the development of post-classical archaeology in Italy. The formalization of these lines of research took place in 1995 with the founding of the Laboratory of Archaeology and Environmental History (LASA) at the University of Genoa, which deals with the study of historical systems of environmental resource management, analyzed from a microanalytical point of view, through a multidisciplinary approach that integrates methods and sources proper to historical ecology, environmental resource archaeology and environmental history. Since the 2010s, LASA's research has developed an increasingly keen interest in the study of the historical relationships between transformations in the practices of environmental resource management, activation and reproduction and the dynamics of peopling, helping to revive the debate in Italy around issues of rural archaeology. Starting from these premises, investigations aimed at investigating the reasons and effects of the processes of abandonment that, since the second half of the 19th century, have affected the Ligurian Apennines, and more generally the European mountains, have been particularly developed, and on the other hand, investigations that allow analytical characterization of the organization of mountain space. The territories investigated in this thesis, included in the inner Antola-Tigullio area, are the subject of decades of research by the LASA, carried out in collaboration with the Regional Natural Parks of Aveto and Antola, the Archaeological Superintendence and the Regional Directorate for Cultural and Landscape Heritage of Liguria (Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities) have allowed the identification of numerous sites of historical-environmental interest, contributing to the nationwide recognition of historical cultural landscapes related to local productions of the Ligurian Apennines. The research presented here fits fully within the lines of research drawn by LASA, applying its methodologies and approaches. Investigating specific and new contexts, it aims to reconstruct the historical processes involved in the survival and/or abandonment of rural territories through the identification of continuities and discontinuities in environmental resource management practices. In particular, the research intends to broaden the knowledge related to the construction and use of terraced systems and the management of collective lands, applying methods and approaches proper to archaeological research and placing them in dialogue with those of other disciplines such as geoarchaeology, cartographic analysis, the study of cadastral, fiscal and jurisdictional sources, and the analysis of oral sources. This doctoral research, dedicated to the Antola-Tigullio Inner Area, was carried out as part of the so-called “Municipal Doctorates,” funded by the Agency for Territorial Cohesion.