Climate, Geoarchaeological and Bioarchaeological practices, Landscape Archaeology. Data to evaluate the use and the transformation of a monastic site (Jure Vetere, Italy).

This work is a multidisciplinary research project started on the archaeological site of Jure Vetere (Calabria region, southern Italy). The excavation area is located on Sila Grande mountain (1100 m a.s.l.), 5 km west of San Giovanni in Fiore, where between the end of the XII century and the first decades of the XIII century a monastic settlement rose. The archaeological research, carried out by IBAM-CNR on the site, made evident a huge ecclesiastical building that features two different phases. What should be pointed out is that, thanks to the multi-disciplinary approach applied to a “Landscape Archaeology” research, important information was collected due to the study of archaeological finds, written sources, ethnoarchaeological data, photo-interpretations, geological and geopedological research, pollen, botanic and archaeometric analysis. The processed data helps us recognize the main areas where the materials came from, and the analysis carried out on the GIS enables us to understand the dislocation of the different types of soil that could be exploited around the site, during the medieval period. The palynological study, from layers deposited in phases which preceded or were coeval to the life time of the monastery, provided the basis for the reconstruction of the ancient plant landscape of the site where the monastery was founded, and supplied the knowledge of the exploitation of plant resources by monks in the short period of occupancy of the site. Burned pollen grains and microcharcoal, frequently observed in the slides, allowed us to add the information about fires, to this environmental reconstruction. These were clearly represented in the samples by the monastery, but became more dramatically evident in the phase of the monastery occupation mainly reflecting the fire which destroyed the first building in 1214. Particular attention has been directed to the analysis of pedological horizons, burying the medieval building and its immediate neighbouring land, in order to evaluate its main characters and define the pedogenetic and geomorphic processes coeval of the soil formation, which still less define the agrarian applications which assure subsistence to the religious community. The study integrated with climate data has permitted us to correlate the history of this settlement with the different evolutive phases of the landscape, closely connected to the local and global climatic conditions coeval of the monastic settlement. Climatic inferences, by comparison with literature, were mainly suggested by pollen of Olea, Fagus and Abies. Within the Medieval Climatic Optimum, the period of life of the monks at Jure Vetere, should have occurred at the onset of a wetter and colder climatic deterioration.