Colli Euganei

MEMOLA, Europe for euganee lands. Innovation, research and communication program of a re-evaluation and improvement of our landscape (May 20th Trade Fair of Padua), where we presented and discussed with the small businessmen of Lower Padua how to create new collaborative synergies to preserve and promote the biodiversity of the Euganean Hills and the areas of the Lower Padua.

The didactic notebook titled “ Water Landscape of Colli Euganei“, include the study of the main elements that have conformed the Eugenian cultural landscapes through the history of this study area based in Padua, Italy. More specifically, it contains the study of water uses from the Middle Ages to the present day, such as navigation channels, water mills and the transformation of river course.

On December the 2nd, UNIPD has conducted a historical cartography lab for the study of the cultural landscapes of the Euganean Hills with the students of IIS Euganeo of Este city. In the fantastic etnographic Museum of Stanghella we analyzed the land use of the nineteenth century, we discovered the large map of the lands reclamation to Gozon river and made some interviews with students to understand what it means landscape for them.

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).

The Padua team has performed the recognition  on  the  surface  of  all anomalies interpreted on raster images obtained  by  remote  sensing  (LiDAR, Radar, Aerial photographs). For instance, the historical photographs and LiDAR images,  allowed  to  recognize  traces  of the  paleo-riverbeds  and  their  relation with the settlement patterns and the formation of agrarian landscapes, as we can see in Baone area (one of the sample areas chosen in the Euganean Hills for the reconstruction of land and water uses).

The October 26, the UNIPD partner has conducted a laboratory of landscape archaeology through the techniques of Remote Sensing (aerial photo, LiDAR) with the students of the IIS Euganeo at Este. In the lab the students have known the usefulness of the images from remote sensing techniques for the study of cultural landscapes.

Leonor Peña Chocarro, CSIC senior researcher, gives a worshop about floating soil samples to the students from the University of Padua.

"Communicating archaeology of the Euganean landscape": historical-cultural itinerary in the ‪medieval‬ ‪fortress‬ of "Rocca Pendice" and one of the ‪watermills‬ located in the "Calto della Contea" with the local association ‪Comitato Mura di Padova‬" and some teachers of the IIS Euganeo (‪MOU‬).