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Recently, the woodmanship practices and localized naturalistic knowledge have been acquired as indispensable for the European forest heritage conservation as well as for restoration of individual woodland landscapes. Minor importance has been given to the historical approach, both in the study of the local resources ecology and of the local societal context. Using the results of a series of case studies-applied to the knowledge and planning of sites that host present (or have hosted in past) wooded pasture systems and their environmental legacy-the chapter shows the interest of the environmental resource archeology (ERA): a "multisource approach" in reconstructing past management systems practices and underpinned lore. ERA is inspired by the method and sources of the English historical ecology and topographical history employing both archives and field evidences (palynology, anthracology, etc.).

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Usually, soils types such as Amerindian "Terra Preta" or "charcoal earth" are considered as archaeological/anthropogenic soils, where explicit human impacts have transformed the patterns, the chemistry and the shape of the soil. There are several woodmanship practices, poorly visible in archaeological features, that have modified the characteristics of these soils and sediments. Today, these activities are difficult to identify, especially those relating to the multiple management of environmental resources (e.g., agro-sylvo-pastoral systems) due to their abandonment and disappearance in southern Europe during the nineteenth and Twentieth centuries. Describing a selection of researches conducted by the Laboratory of Archaeology and Environmental History (LASA) team in the Ligurian Apennines, this article explores the potential role of Environmental Resources Archaeology (ERA) and site(s)-level historical ecology approaches to past land use and woodmanship practices characterisation. In particular, focus is given to the practices derived from analysis of microcharcoal in the soils and sediments. Such an approach involves and combines the use of multiple sources (documentary, oral, observational and bio-stratigraphic sources), a regressive analysis method and a strong spatial and social contextualization.

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