Pollen and macroremains from Holocene archaeological sites: A dataset for the understanding of the bio-cultural diversity of the Italian landscape

Abstract

Over the last millennia, the land between the Alps and the Mediterranean Sea, characterized by extraordinary habitat diversity, has seen an outstanding cross-cultural development. For the first time, this paper reports on the census of the Holocene archaeological sites that have been studied as part of archaeobotany in Italy (continental Italy, the Italian peninsula and islands) over the last quarter in a century. Pollen, non-pollen palynomorphs, seeds and fruits, woods/charcoals and other plant remains have all been analysed in multidisciplinary researches. A list of 630 sites has been provided by more than 15 archaeobotanical teams. The sites are located across the 20 regions of Italy, and in the Republic of San Marino (356 sites in northern Italy, 118 in central Italy, 156 in southern Italy and on the islands). They belong to several cultural phases: 321 sites are only pre-Roman, 264 are Roman/post-Roman, and 45 sites cover a broader range of time, present in both time spans. Site distribution is plotted in maps of site density according to geographical districts and the main chronological phases. The reference list helps to find analytical data referring to the descriptive papers that may be scattered throughout monographs and specific books on the matter

Climate change versus land management in the Po Plain (Northern Italy) during the Bronze Age: New insights from the VP/VG sequence of the Terramara Santa Rosa di Poviglio

“…The absence of diagnostic macroremains in this deposit prevents the possibility of distinguishing among the subspecies. At the beginning of Middle Bronze Age, pips with intermediate characteristics between the two subspecies sylvestris and vinifera were reported by several authors (Castello di Annone -Asti, Piedmont: Castelletti and Motella De Carlo, 1998; San Lorenzo a Greve e Florence, Tuscany: Aranguren et al, 2007; Portella, Salina e Sicily: Fiorentino et al, 2011;Marvelli et al, 2013;Mercuri et al, 2015b).…”

7300 years of vegetation history and climate for NW Malta: a Holocene perspective

“…This increasing human pressure on the landscape during the Bronze Age is not isolated to the Maltese archipelago or the central Mediterranean area (Mercuri, 2014) it has also been recorded throughout the whole region, between 5000 and 3000 cal BP, as societies and their associated ecological disturbances become more apparent (Sadori and Giardini, 2007;Mercuri et al, 2015). Sadori et al (2011) note two signals within the Mediterranean; the first corresponds to a climate event of 4300-3800 BP , that of a sudden and brief episode between 4400 and 4100 cal BP which initially affects the arboreal pollen concentration followed by the percentages (generally being accompanied by human presence indicators), then a second between 3900 and 3400 BP, which they suggest is slightly longer and involved intensive land exploitation.…”

The evolution of Roman urban environments through the archaeobotanical remains in Modena – Northern Italy

“…This result shows that pollen and seeds/fruits from archaeological sites are basically a result of human transport but a variable component from natural plant cover may be included in layers depending on the context (Sadori et al, 2010b;Swię ta-Musznicka et al, 2013;Mercuri et al, 2014a). The sediments of Trench Campi-S2 were accumulated out of an archaeological site, and therefore the contribution of natural plant cover to the deposit is expected to be higher than that in the archaeological layers.…”

“…The plant taxa that were recurrent, sometimes dominant, in these on-site/off-site records represent both the plant cover and the species with cultural significance in the study area (Mercuri et al, 2014a).…”

“…Urban archaeobotany investigates plant remains from complex anthropogenic contexts, discovered against the background of the historic centres of modern cities (Greig, 1996;Mercuri et al, 2014a). In a broader sense, it investigates the history of past towns (e.g.…”