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RESEARCH PRODUCT

The Traditional Mediterranean Polycultural Landscape as Cultural Heritage: Its Origin and Historical Importance, Its Agro-Silvo-Pastoral Complexity and the Necessity for Its Identification and Inventory

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Today, the Mediterranean is characterized by landscape patterns whose compositions result from countless, long and complex cultural and historical processes. However, the pressure on these landscapes and their rapid transformation into more modern forms call out for a better knowledge of the more complex forms of traditional land use and relative landscapes. In this context, an identification and clarification of the role of such mixed and complex forms of agro-forestry systems and landscapes, named “giardino Mediterraneo” (“Mediterranean garden”) is necessary. This term is often applied to and associated with numerous different agricultural and agro-forestry systems as well as to numerous different kinds of rural landscapes, due to the complex and intricate historical process that has led to their identification and cultural evolution over time. This study identifies the characteristics of the polycultural and polyspecific Mediterranean garden’s landscape, characterized by the presence of trees (both wild and cultivated), starting from a historical overview of Sicily. The analysed Halaesa landscape (Sicily) case study, as one of the first historical detailed description of a complex Mediterranean cultural landscape, is the result of a polycultural agro-silvo-pastoral system which guarantees complexity and richness (in terms of structural and biological diversity), as well as with reference to others environmental, cultural and economic multifunctionality. However, a comparison with the typological systems currently used for the cataloguing and mapping of traditional Mediterranean landscapes at different scales shows the transversal importance of polycultural Mediterranean garden landscapes, and demonstrates how much a better definition and characterization of them is needed.