Cultural landscapes of the past

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 trans- formations.The papers reported in this special issue present examples of archaeobotanical studies from Mediter- ranean countries, and offer a fairly articulated illustration of how much different contexts can be investigated. The range of time mainly includes Bronze Age and Roman times, but also some reference to later periods are included. As archae- obotanical analysis was well-defined by Faegri et al.’s (1989) words as the study of anthropogenic indica- tors in past contexts, most part of these papers is dedicated to consider and discuss the roles of cultivated and wild synanthropic plants.