When palynology meets classical archaeology: the Roman and medieval landscapes at the Villa del Casale di Piazza Armerin
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ORIGINAL PAPER
When palynology meets classical archaeology: the Roman and medieval landscapes at the Villa del Casale di Piazza Armerina, UNESCO site in Sicily Maria Chiara Montecchi 1
&
Anna Maria Mercuri 1
Received: 30 March 2016 / Accepted: 22 November 2016 # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016
Abstract Palynological researches have been carried out in the framework of cooperative projects with local and national institutions at the Villa Romana del Casale of Piazza Armerina, a small town in central Sicily. The site was studied within a multidisciplinary geo-bio-archaeological set of studies aiming at understanding the economy and environment at a local scale. Analyses allowed us to reconstruct the natural vs cultural landscape dynamics from Roman to medieval periods. On the basis of 85 samples, pollen diagrams show that the site has been built in a low forest cover area, with signs of both natural/seminatural cover and complex anthropogenic activities. These activities include cereal fields and pastures. There is evidence of ornamental (e.g. Platanus, Buxus) and fruit trees (above all Olea, and also, e.g. Corylus, Prunus and Juglans). The research also includes a detailed study about the finding of Vitis pollen grains in the Roman site. In the subsequent phases, pollen shows again an open, fairly treeless, landscape with Mediterranean and hilly vegetation. Anthropogenic signs are evident in the form of groves and orchards. Our data bring evidence and details about the intense land exploitation that had contributed to transform the environment of central Sicily during the Middle and Late Holocene. Data demonstrate that archaeopalynology may be fruitfully regarded as a tool to understand the current landscape structure. Keywords Archaeopalynology . Sicily . Roman . Medieval . UNESCO site . Vitis . Brassicaceae * Maria Chiara Montecchi [email protected]
1
Laboratorio di Palinologia e Paleobotanica, Dipartimento di Scienze della Vita, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Viale Caduti in Guerra 127, 41121 Modena, Italy
Introduction Villa del Casale is an extraordinary historical settlement located in Sicily, the large island that lies in the central Mediterranean (Fig. 1). Since 1997, the archaeological site has been included in the UNESCO World Heritage List thanks to its inestimable floor mosaics that dated to the Late Roman period (fourth century AD). Thanks to the exceptional richness of architectural and decorative elements, the site represents a unique archaeological inheritance, located in one of the most visited archaeological park of the region with more than 300,000 people every year.1 In the last decade, it has been subjected to a systematic programme of safeguarding, restoration and valorisation thanks to archaeological and interdisciplinary researches granted by the European Union (Meli 2007). The historical complex of the site changed architecture and function through approximately 15 centuries. From the end of the first century AD until the fourteenth–sixteenth century AD, t
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