Human impact in the last 4000 years. Cultural Landscapes of the Past. PALICLAS ... Ex Cinema Capitol. Ex Cinema Splendor. Ex Manifatt. Tabacchi. Largo S.
Laboratorio di Palinologia e Paleobotanica www.palinopaleobot.unimore.it Dipartimento Scienze della Vita - Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia Member of:
Anna Maria Mercuri Giovanna Bosi Marta Mazzanti Paola Torri
PALICLAS
SBI - Società Botanica Italiana
EU Framework 3 Climate and Environment Programme
Cultural Landscapes of the Past
GRUPPO GP - SBI
GPSBI- Gruppo Palinologia SBI
Research Day 2013 – 22 Marzo 2013
International Federation of Palynological Societies
Human impact on shaping the Mediterranean landscape and adaptive strategies to Holocene environmental changes
European Pollen Database European Modern Pollen Database
Human impact in the last 4000 years
Mediterranean culture and climatic change: past patterns and future trends.
Five case studies are reported as examples of how archaeobotanical records can be tools to analyse cultural responses to environmental changes.
Anna Maria Mercuri, Laura Sadori Dorthecht –Springer ISBN 978-94-007-6703-4.30 Date June 2013
Around the Mediterranean ‘Lake’, the history of cultural–environmental relations under changing climate was so complex that there are serious difficulties in distinguishing climate change from human impact in many proxy-data records.
The Mediterranean basin has always featured, and still has, extremely rich and intermingled environmental and cultural biodiversity. The mosaic of habitats distributed around the Mediterranean basin was primarily transformed by climatic changes occurring at a global scale. In the meantime, the environment has been continuously exploited and the landscape shaped. Mediterranean is in fact a key region that is world-wide as the house for many of the most ancient civilizations.
Left: the five case study: a, a1. Uan Afuda cave; a2. planimetry; b. Benzú; c. La Vaquera cave; c1. environmental set; c2. planimetry; d. Terramara di Montale; e. Arslantepe. Right: Mediterranean sites discussed in the paper.
Pollen and archaeobotany are links among plants, habitats and cultural changes, while climate changes are at the basis on the overall environmental and landscape transformations.
The development of cultural landscapes is the most evident effect in the history of the nature-culture relationship under Holocene climate changes. The botanical information useful for understanding human-related environmental changes is sealed both in archaeological layers and in sediment cores which were for- med at times of human activities in the sediment source areas. An increasing dryness is by the decrease of Fagus after 5700 cal BP and continuing gradually in the millennia. Then, the reduction in the natural woodland vegetation, both deciduous and evergreen trees, is visible.
Ferrara Gardolo
By definition, human activities contributed to reduce natural woodland by substituting it either with crops and pastures, or by protected plants and managed woods such as chestnut woods, olive groves, orchards or pine woods. People could also take advantage of open spaces produced by natural changes, and settled in areas where there were both enough natural resources, especially water and wood, and a setting not too difficult to open up to establish settlements and fields. Humans acted as dispersal agents and seeds of useful plants were even involuntarily carried nearer houses.
Ospedale Maggiore - Milano
Grotta Tanella
Milano
Parma
Piazza Municipale
Canàr Nogara Cerea
Boccarone
The Middle Bronze Age people knew woodland management by coppicing, and shaped the environment into a patchwork of pastures and fields near the site, while woods were left at the margins of the area of influence. The evolution of the modern cultural landscape in the Po plain became evident at around 3600 cal BP. Then, the ‘chestnut landscape’, which still remains characteristic of the Apennine hill vegetation belts, became widely established around 700 cal BP, only declining in modern times.
Giardino delle Duchesse
Volta Mantovana Casale di Rivalta
Ferrara Montegibbio Baggiovara Montale Argenta S 17 Cittanova Rubiera Monte Castellaccio Modena Sant’Agata Monte Bibele Imola Lugo Ravenna Sarzana Faenza Russi Forlì Domagnano Poggio Castellano Cà di Rigo Casinalbo
Toscana
Porta Reno
Monastero S. Antonio
Piazza Castello
Modena Cassa di Risparmio Chiesa San Paolo Corso Duomo Ex Cinema Capitol Ex Cinema Splendor Ex Manifatt. Tabacchi Largo S. Francesco Via Castellaro Via C. Menotti Via Emilia Est Via P. Ferrari V.le Amendola Palazzo Boschetti Palazzo Vaccari
Grotte Frasassi Grotta Vacche
Podere Marzuolo Poggio dell’Amore
Isabella Massamba N’siala Linda Olmi Assunta Florenzano Rossella Rinaldi Maria Chiara Montecchi Eleonora Rattighieri Fabrizio Buldrini Delia Fanetti
Podere Terrato
Case Nuove
Poggio dell’Amore Podere Terrato San Martino Case Nuove
PAL8 PAL11
SA 03/01
PAL 9
SA 03/11 Isola Montecristo
Colle Massari
Ex Cinema Capitol
V.le Amendola
Via C. Menotti
Parco Novi Ark
RF95-13 RF93-30 Piano Locce
Colle Massari
San Martino
Vegetation history of VIA CAMPI: pollen sampling from the exposed section under the new building of Chemistry and Geology
Podere Marzuolo L. Albano L. Nemi
Sassari
Parco Novi Ark
Largo S. Francesco
Minturno
Piano Locce
Castellammare di Stabia
Vescovado
Palazzo Vaccari Torre Satriano Altojanni
Cassa di Risparmio
Miglionico Fattoria Fabrizio
Basilicata
Difesa S.Biagio S. Angelo Pizzica
Pantanello
Grotta Scario CHORA OF METAPONTUM
Fattoria Fabrizio Ville S.Marco e Arianna
Altojanni
Miglionico
Jure Vetere Sassari Sant’Angelo Vecchio Grotta Scario Difesa San Biagio Stromboli
Torre di Satriano
Pantanello
Anthropogenic pollen indicators
Palynological analysis of Basilicata region's sites shows the intense land use due to pasture / livestock practices; pollen data indicate that the economy of the ancient Lucan Peoples was largely based on farming, an activity that has strongly influenced the cultures and the development of the landscape in the region until today.
Taormina Isola di Mozia
Jure Vetere
Villa Armerina Philosophiana
Percentage pollen diagram of 83 samples from the 8 Lucanian sites: cluster analysis based on selected taxa
Sicilia
Microscopical remains from archaeological sites: a way to read and understand the environmental trasformations and development of cultural landscape (vegetation and human impact) in the last c. 11,500 years (Holocene) 20 μm
Philosophiana
Villa del Casale Quercus cf. cerris
Prunus
Pinus Parasite eggs from Medieval Parma: 1) Trichuris (cf. trichiura) Vitis
Olea
Avena/Triticum group San Vincenzo - Stromboli
Taormina
2) Trichuris (cf. suis) 3) Ascaris 4) Capillaria
Isola di Mozia
5) Dicrocoelium Nymphaea
Cichorieae
Chenopodiaceae
6) Diphyllobothrium
