Life on the burial mounds of southern Italy – ancient stone mounds as refuges for Mediterranean flora

Our latest article, with Rocco Labadessa as the first author, has been published. Here we were able to indulge our passion for the biodiversity sustained by ancient burial mounds in a new biogeographic region: the Mediterranean :)

The citation of the paper:

Labadessa, R., Vicario, S., Tarantino, C., Valkó, O., & Deák, B. (2026). Life in the graveyard: ancient stone burial mounds as refuges for Mediterranean grassland vegetation. Global Ecology and Conservation, e04361.

The paper is freely available on the journal's homepage (please click here).

In the Mediterranean landscapes of southern Italy, stone-built mounds preserve the memory of the past. The nearly one hundred burial mounds of the San Magno necropolis were constructed around 2,700–2,800 years ago, between the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age. However, these ancient structures are valuable not only from an archaeological and cultural perspective.

In a joint Italian–Hungarian study led by Rocco Labadessa (Institute of Environmental Intelligence and Technologies at the Italian National Research Council), we explored the potential role of these stone mounds in conserving threatened species of the Mediterranean flora. This question is particularly important because the region's semi-natural dry grasslands have declined considerably and become increasingly fragmented over recent decades and centuries. The remaining habitats are further threatened by the abandonment of formerly widespread grazing practices and by the growing populations and increasing disturbance of wild boar.

We found that the rocky surfaces of the burial mounds provide excellent refuges for grassland species that prefer open habitats, while also protecting the soil from severe disturbance, as the stony ground is not particularly attractive to rooting wild boar. The small and varied habitats among the stones create distinctive microclimatic conditions that may also buffer the effects of heat and drought.

As a result, the mounds support more grassland plant species than the surrounding grasslands, including numerous perennial and habitat-specialist species. We also found species on the mounds that were entirely absent from their immediate surroundings. These included the southern Italian endemic feather grass Stipa austroitalica, which is recognized as a species of particular conservation importance under the European Union's Habitats Directive. This suggests that the burial mounds may have preserved elements of formerly more extensive natural grassland vegetation over long periods of landscape change.

Although less than a metre high, these ancient structures now function as habitat islands in a profoundly transformed landscape. Protecting them therefore contributes to the conservation of both archaeological heritage and biodiversity. However, the mounds alone cannot safeguard nature: appropriate management of the surrounding grasslands and the maintenance of connections between habitats are equally essential.

The burial mounds of San Magno clearly demonstrate that monuments inherited from humanity's distant past can also play an important role in nature conservation today.