Archaeobotany for cultural landscape and human impact reconstructions.

The special issue ‘‘Cultural landscapes of the past’’ is the outcome of the idea to present a set of researches centered on past cultural landscapes reconstructed principally on the basis of an integrated archaeobo- tanical approach. The publication of this topic on Plant Biosystems, the research international journal edited by the Societa` Botanica Italiana, accomplishes to our deliberate purpose of emphasizing the role of plants as key elements of the landscape and their consequent invaluable usefulness in revealing past cultural trajectories involving environmental transformations.