European open Landscapes: the comparason of the human land use strategies of three Mediterranean Mountains: The Mont Lozére (France), the Sierra de Gredos (Spain) ant the Monte Cimone (Italy) since the Neolithic period. International AGRESPE network

The presentation aims to compare the origin of the open landscapes of pastoral mountain systems located in the Mediterranean Basin (France: Mont Lozère, Spain: Sierra de Gredos, Italy: Tosco-Emiliano Apennines) since the Neolithic period. Even if the three mountains selected show several differences linked to the climate, vegetation types, altitude, they are characterized by the change from an intense agro-pastoral and industrial exploitation to a gradual abandonment which leads to an open landscape part of the heritage identity. Until 2011, date of the construction of the network AGRESPE ( Gestion de Ressources Environnementales passéeS et Patrimonialisation paysagèrE, dir. Bal et Allée) these three mountain systems were studied with a strong difference in the scientific interest. For example, the Mont Lozère was considered very early as an anthroposylvosystem. Therefore, the palaeoecological and archaeological studies were developed with the same importance. Unlike the Sierra de Gredos (Spain) and the Monte Cimone (Italy) for which there is a lot of pastoral structures but the archaeological study was inexistent. The objective of the Agrespe network is to apply the same geographical approach and the same scientific methodology in all of these European mountains. Pedoanthracology is a potent method allows study of the composition of past plant woody communities and to highlight the history of the ligneous landscape at a high spatial scale (the scale of the slope). In order to increase the knowledge of these open landscapes and to obtain new data at a high spatial scale, the pedoanthracology was applied according to an altitudinal transect and compared with preliminary data (pollen, subfossil wood, historical sources, pastoral archaeology) concerning each area. Even if these mountains shared some similarities in the use of the environmental resources, the construction and the management of the open spaces reveal some dissimilarities. At the Mont Lozère, the soil charcoal data extracted from the Nardus stricta grassland located at above 1400 m altitude, permit to identify this open area like a mountain belt recovered by an ancient open beech forest that has been used and transformed by societies since the Neolithic period. At the Sierra de Gredos (Spain), the pedoanthracological data reveal an ancient Pinus timberline located at around 1700 m a.s.l., and above 1700 m a.s.l. a natural open space dominated by Fabaceae since the last 9000 year BP. At the northern Apennines, the preliminary pedoanthracological results demonstrate that the ancient timberline was probably located at higher altitude (around 1800 m asl.) than the actual (1550 m asl.). The increase of the knowledge of these landscapes help us to propose future management of these open spaces in collaboration with parks and heritage associations at the scale of each country and at the scale of Europe.