The palaeoenvironmental reconstruction of the Terramara Santa Rosa di Poviglio from the Bronze Age to the XVI century AD (SUCCESSO-TERRA project)

Santa Rosa di Poviglio is an archaeological site that has been investigated since more than 30 years under the direction of M. Cremaschi, and recently is at the centre of the national-funded project SUCCESSO-TERRA Human societies, climate-environment changes and resource exploitation/ sustainability in the Po Plain at the Mid-Holocene times: the Terramara. In this project, the environmental and land-use changes have been investigated to understand their relationships over the last millennia. The approach is especially based on on-site palynological analyses (Mercuri 2014) integrated with the study of plant macroremains (seeds/fruits, charcoals). First analyses were focused on obtaining detailed comprehension of the adaptive strategies of the Terramare people during the Late Holocene. Santa Rosa di Poviglio was a terramara during the Middle/Recent Bronze ages (1550–1170 BC; Cremaschi et al. 2016). The interdisciplinary geoarchaeological and archaeobotanical research wants now to reconstruct environmental changes that occurred from the onset of the terramara to the following phases, until the XVI century AD, taking this site as emblematic of the land transformations of the southern-central part of the Po Plain. ... The palynological research showed a transformation in flora composition and plant communities, suggesting a dynamic agricultural economy. The latter was possibly practiced on the basis of wood management and crop fields. At the top of the VP/VG sequence of Santa Rosa di Poviglio, in correspondence with the drying of the moat system, a dramatic decrease of woods may had a twofold causation: increased aridity (natural factor) and intensive land-use (anthropic factor) might have played a fairly synchronous action on vegetation. After the Bronze age phase, the agro-system rapidly decreased or changed typology. In fact, pasturelands spread with much land devoted to grazing. Also the cultivation of hemp is recorded, and a quite expansion of woods during the most recent phases documented by pollen (Grant: PRIN2015 8KBLNB).