Mid-Holocene cultural landscapes and climate change in Mediterranean and north-African areas

During the Holocene, intense changes in climate, in environment and in cultural systems have occurred. Cultural trajectories have shown trends fairly coincident with climatic changes in Mediterranean and north-African areas. In particular, three dry events occurring at ca. 8200 cal yr BP, ca. 6000 cal yr BP and ca. 4200 cal yr BP seem to have been of key relevance for fairly synchronous climatic-cultural changes (Mercuri et al., in press). Archaeobotanical records (pollen and macroremains) help to recognise and date human presence and activity in different territories indicating that when human groups occupied a region they exploited the territory and operated a choice of useful plants for food, building and fire. Humans used and selected what the territory offered. When climatic-environmental changes occurred, humans changed their plant resources from time to time moving towards what was available in the territory and changing their subsistence strategies. Over-exploitation of thinned plant ressources including overgrazing, sometimes accelerated the evolution of aridity in a drying climatic phase. In these cases humans enforced aridity crisis and the relevant climate signal in palaeoclimatic records was enhanced. When dry climate depleted water and plant resources under a sustainable level, humans necessarily moved to new places.This work reports pollen and charcoal studies from six archaeological sites located around Mediterranean basin covering the three main dry events mentioned above :Wadi-Teshuinat area (south-western Libya), Benzú cave (Ceuta, Spain, north-western Africa), La Vaquera cave (central Spain), Lago di Mezzano (central Italy), Terramara di Montale (northern Italy) and Arslantepe (eastern Anatolia, Turkey).Archaeobotany suggests that Bronze age has probably marked the environment more than the Neolithic, possibly because there is a relationship between knowledge improvement, culture development and evolution of complexity in land exploitation.The work was partially financed by project PICAR - cultural landscaPe and human Impact in Circum-mediterranean countries - Programmi di Ricerca scientifica di rilevante Interesse Nazionale 2008FJCEF4Mercuri AM, Sadori L, Uzquiano Ollero P. in press. Mediterranean and north-African cultural adaptations to mid-Holocene environmental and climatic changes. The Holocene.