A spectral sequence for stratified spaces and configuration spaces of points

Abstract: We construct a spectral sequence associated to a stratified space, which computes the compactly supported cohomology groups of an open stratum in terms of the compactly supported cohomology groups of closed strata and the reduced cohomology groups of the poset of strata. Several familiar spectral sequences arise as special cases. The construction is sheaf-theoretic and works both for topological spaces and for the \'etale cohomology of algebraic varieties. As an application we prove a very general representation stability theorem for configuration spaces of points.