Coastal environments in the Mediterranean basin are defined “sensitive areas” to climatic changes and human influence during the Holocene. The Sybaris Plain is a coastal deltaic plain in Calabria (Italy) and is a perfect area to detect environmental changes and resilient strategies adopted by past populations during the last millennia. The active migrating shoreline, related to the Crati Delta eastward-seaward depositional system, caused an important accumulation of sediment in the area during the Holocene. The compaction of Crati and Coscile river sediments, in combination with the land low morphology, determines the high rate of subsidence. The human presence in the plain has been attested since the Neolithic time. The continuous construction-destructionabandonment-reconstruction cycles attest different resilience strategies adopted by ancient civilizations. In order to produce a new and improved paleoenvironment reconstruction of the area, a 40 m sediment core was drilled in the centre of the plain (39°73’N; 16°40’E, at 13 m a.s.l.), thanks to the collaboration with ITALFERR group and studied using pollen analysis coupled with sedimentological and magnetic properties determinations. The complexity of the study area, characterized by changes in the water table, has been reconstructed for the late Holocene. Changes in the vegetation cover are recognizable in the pollen record, mainly drove by the alternation of dry open environments, lowland swamp, and alluvial forests, and in the trend of non-Pollen Palynomorphs indicators as well as in the lithology. The land-use for agriculture and grazing is also evidenced through the sequence by the occurrence of cultivated and synanthropic taxa together with NPPs and charcoals. This data has been compared with the archaeological data in order to reconstruct the land use in the plain. The combination of palynological and sedimentological data describes an environment modelled by the fluctuations of groundwater and climatic variability as well as by the human pressure.
Climatic and hydrologic changes vs. human resilience in the Sybaris Plain (Italy) / Cavasinni, Chiara; Forti, Luca; Giaccio, Biagio; Izdebski, Adam; Macrì, Patrizia; Masi, Alessia; Vanzetti, Alessandro; Sadori, Laura. - (2024), pp. 233-234. (Intervento presentato al convegno 30th European Association of Archaeologists, EAA Annual Meeting (Rome, 2024) tenutosi a Rome; Italy).
Climatic and hydrologic changes vs. human resilience in the Sybaris Plain (Italy)
Chiara Cavasinni
;Luca Forti;Alessia Masi;Alessandro Vanzetti;Laura Sadori
2024
Abstract
Coastal environments in the Mediterranean basin are defined “sensitive areas” to climatic changes and human influence during the Holocene. The Sybaris Plain is a coastal deltaic plain in Calabria (Italy) and is a perfect area to detect environmental changes and resilient strategies adopted by past populations during the last millennia. The active migrating shoreline, related to the Crati Delta eastward-seaward depositional system, caused an important accumulation of sediment in the area during the Holocene. The compaction of Crati and Coscile river sediments, in combination with the land low morphology, determines the high rate of subsidence. The human presence in the plain has been attested since the Neolithic time. The continuous construction-destructionabandonment-reconstruction cycles attest different resilience strategies adopted by ancient civilizations. In order to produce a new and improved paleoenvironment reconstruction of the area, a 40 m sediment core was drilled in the centre of the plain (39°73’N; 16°40’E, at 13 m a.s.l.), thanks to the collaboration with ITALFERR group and studied using pollen analysis coupled with sedimentological and magnetic properties determinations. The complexity of the study area, characterized by changes in the water table, has been reconstructed for the late Holocene. Changes in the vegetation cover are recognizable in the pollen record, mainly drove by the alternation of dry open environments, lowland swamp, and alluvial forests, and in the trend of non-Pollen Palynomorphs indicators as well as in the lithology. The land-use for agriculture and grazing is also evidenced through the sequence by the occurrence of cultivated and synanthropic taxa together with NPPs and charcoals. This data has been compared with the archaeological data in order to reconstruct the land use in the plain. The combination of palynological and sedimentological data describes an environment modelled by the fluctuations of groundwater and climatic variability as well as by the human pressure.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.