Cultural landscape and human impact reconstruction by an archaeobotanical-biological approach

The project PICAR (Cultural landscaPe and human Impact in Circum-mediterranean countries: multidisciplinary Archaeobotanical research for environmental, phylogeographic, climatic and virtual Reconstructions; Programmi di Ricerca Scientifica di Rilevante Interesse Nazionale 2008FJCEF4 - Italy) focuses on cultural landscape reconstructions and on the recognition of plants related to anthropic presence or activities in a territory (collected or cultivated economic plants; useful, including those that are currently neglected, plants; wild synanthropic plants). The focus is on the knowledge of the general response of environmental dynamics to human impact in the past, and on how different environments changed under the pressure of different civilizations. This communication will report some examples of the multidisciplinary archaeobotanical studies that the research team of the laboratory of Modena has carried out in the last years, mainly dealing with contexts from Italian archaeological sites. Pollen and macroremains analyses were and are commonly integrated with archaeological data. This methodology allows comparisons between different times and geographical areas giving new hints to human landscape reconstructions, by comparing in which way humans exploited plant resources in their territories, adapting them to the changing environment under the changing Holocene climate, and by transforming soils and vegetation according to their cultural needs.