Reconstructing the Historic Rural Landscape Through an Integrated and Interdisciplinary Methodology: The Case Study of Staffarda Abbey (Italy)

Combining landscape studies with historical studies and archeology is a scientific challenge: through the skills of historians, archeologists, agronomists, and computer scientists, an integrated and interdisciplinary methodology was adopted. The aim was to backtrack historical landscape changes and permanences in the rural landscape around Staffarda Abbey (Piedmont, Northwest Italy), a medieval monastery founded in the XII century on a surface of 1356 ha and its farms. Surveys, field observations, landscape observations, and historical and archival analyses (XII–XX century) were performed. Several document types, such as historical cartography, iconographies, cadastral maps, notes, descriptions, topographic maps, inventories, and photographs, were deeply analyzed. These documents referred to different historic periods (XII–XXI century) and provided qualitative and quantitative data. Using a fixed-wing drone, the aerial photographs were reworked and georeferenced. QGIS was used to perform diachronic analyses at the landscape level. The advanced land analysis methodologies were compared with the post-medieval cartographic data that were collected. The landscape dynamics and land-use changes were quantified over time, and routes, tree lines, hedgerows, and canals were recognized as qualifying elements. In this study, qualitative and quantitative data were collected, processed, systematized, and analyzed using a digital platform. Using different scales, readings, and interpretations, the landscape dynamics of a rural medieval site were reconstructed.