Linear infrastructures that characterize a past land management: the Montagnola Senese dry stone walls. A methodological approach of analysis

aim of the paper is to highlight the development of a methodology for studying linear infrastructures such as dry stone walls, characteristic items of an earlier land management in the Siena countryside. The study area on which this methodology was tested is located in the Site of Community Importance (SCI) “Montagnola Senese”. It was chosen as an example of an historical form of agricultural and forest land management, partly related to the key presence of the above mentioned artefacts. This methodology was based on the analysis of an historical cadastre and the concurrent construction and updating of a L.I.S. (Land Information System) processed in a GIS environment. In order to compare 1825 data about land use, land ownership and parcel boundaries of the current walls were surveyed during fieldwork through GPS handheld equipment. The results show quite a good correspondance between wall lines and cadastral parcel boundary lines, mostly in the woodland. The analysis of the study area brings out that the walls were designed to carry out different functions such as property boundary, to enclose fields and defend them from the entrance of livestock while grazing in the woodland, and subdivide a same land property in different management portions both as cultivated fields and as woodland.