Palynological approach to reconstruct cultural landscape evolution: case studies from South Italy

The joint botanical–archaeological research allows to improve the knowledge on environmental and landuse changes and to investigate transformations of plant landscapes at archaeological sites. In particular, archaeopalynology plays a key role in the full understanding of both past environmental history and human-environment relationships reconstruction. This paper presents the palynological research carried out in the Metaponto area, (Basilicata, South Italy), where many rural sites have been studied in order to reconstruct the origin and evolution of the current landscape. Pollen data bring evidence of the continuative human action that shaped the local vegetation into the modern agrarian landscape, whose onset is placed in the area about three thousand years ago.