My name is Anna Maria Stagno. I am an Italian rural archaeologist, PhD in Historical Geography by the University of Genoa at the Laboratory of Environmental Archaeology and History (LASA).
During my PhD I had the occasion to collaborate in defining the archaeology of environmental resources approach, as elaborated in the LASA (Moreno et al. 2010). From there, I developed new paths of archaeological research towards the archaeology of commons. The archaeology of environmental resources merges approaches and methodologies of the English Historical Ecology (mainly O. Rackham, cfr. Racham 1973; 1990 and Moreno 1990) with the perspective of Italian social microhistory (Grendi 1993). This approach combines the study of present (ecological observation) and past (archaeobotanical studies) environments with documentary research to reconstruct the environmental-historical processes related to specific present-day landscape configurations, to understand the historical process of biodiversification, the environmental effects of the abandonment of rural activities and to investigate possible applications of the research (Maggi et al. 2002; Cevasco 2007; Moneta, Parola 2014).
After my PhD and some years of post-doctoral research at the LASA, I carried out a Marie Curie IEF Fellowship at the University of the Basque Country (2014-2017) with the project ARCHIMEDE – ARchaeology of commons. Cultural HerItage and Material Evidence of a Disappearing Europe. Starting from the archaeology of environmental resources, through ARCHIMEDE, I explored new paths of archaeological research investigating the social and jurisdictional dimensions of environmental resource management practices and, so, addressing common lands in their jurisdictional meaning (Stagno 2016).
In that project, I demonstrated that archaeology can detect changes in access rights to the commons, identifying archaeological and ecological evidence of past agro-forestry-pastoral practices in the landscape and in the soils and relating them to different stage of appropriation (Stagno 2018b; 2017).
Now I am exploring new possibilities of archaeological research. During my stay in Durham I will deepen into the interdisciplinary aspects of my research by incorporating different perspective and focusing on the role claiming of access rights to land and environmental resources in shaping our landscape. I am currently working on a new project (ERC Starting Grant for which I applied last October), named “ANTIGONE – Archeology of shariNg pracTIces: the material evidence of mountain marGinalisatiON in Europe (18th- 21st c. AD)”. In this project, I aim to investigate the role of the disappearance of practices for managing shared environmental resources (meadows, water, pastures, etc.) in the abandonment and political marginalisation of European mountain areas from the 18th century onwards. I am sure this project will also benefit from the research on Landscapes of rights.
Landscapes of rights 