Dr. Sylvain Burri (from CNRS-Université d’Aix-Marseille and collaborator of the MEMOLA project) has begun the ethnoarchaeological study of some areas of the Euganean Hills through a historical and ethnographical study of the incultum landscape. He started the study of the medieval historical registers and archives listed in the Archive of Venice, to make the census and the analysis of all the activities of uncultivated areas in the Euganean Hills (charcoal, mines, resins, limekilns). This kind of documentations allow the detection and quantitative reconstruction of their exploitation in that historical periods.
Parallel to the archival studies, Dr. Burri and Dr. Sandrine Paradise (specialist in Archaeobotany and Dendroarchaeology), started the field survey of the forests at the Euganean Hills, in order to document the presence of charcoal kilns. They have located several abandoned charcoal kilns between the Valnogaredo area and the Venda hill, one of the sample areas chosen for the archaeobotanical, pedological and sedimentological study within the project. Moreover, Dr. Sandrine Paradise last February obtained a Marie Curie fellowship to develop from 2016 at the University of Padua (Project THISTLE: Transformation and the management of HIStorical foresT. Landscapes of the Eugaean Hill (Padua, Italy). Fresh perspectives through spatial analyses and dendro-anthracology.). The aim of her project, linked to the objectives of MEMOLA, is to develop an integrated approach combining disciplines like history, ethnography, archaeology, geography, archaeobotany, to reconstruct forest landscapes on the Euganean Hills at different temporal and spatial scales. Forested landscapes represent the ecological inheritance of centuries of forest management to supply, among their products, the fuel necessary for human activities, so the local community is keen to undertake research regarding the cultural landscape in order to empower the region.