This paper focuses on high-resolution analysis of pollen and sedimentology and botanical macro-remains analysis in a core from Lake Banyoles (Girona, Spain). The core sequence comprises a high ...resolution mid-Holocene (ca. 8.9–3.35calkaBP) vegetation succession, and sedimentological, geochemical and geomorphological proxies are related to both climatic and anthropogenic causes. Deforestation processes affected natural vegetation development in the Early Neolithic (7.25–5.55calkaBP) and Late Neolithic (5.17–3.71calkaBP), in the context of broadleaf deciduous forest resilience against cooling and drying oscillations. Changes in sedimentation dynamics and in lake water level caused the emergence of dry land on the lake margin where riparian forest was established from 5.55calkaBP onwards. The data show that in the context of an increasing aridification process, Neolithic land-use played an important role in vegetation history and environmental evolution.
•Human-environment relationships are studied around Lake Banyoles (NE Spain).•Broadleaf deciduous forests were resilient against cooling and drying oscillations.•Riparian forest was established in emerged dry land due to changes in sedimentation.•Anthropic deforestation affected vegetation and lake sedimentation during Neolithic.
To better understand the location and help in the conservation of buried structures in the ancient site of Tusculum, in Central Italy, archaeological and multi-methodological geophysical studies were ...developed in the recent last years. These studies included geophysical surveys, which were combined with topographical survey and direct archaeological excavations. Tusculum is one of the largest Roman archaeological sites in the Alban Hills, located in the Latium region (Italy), about 25 km South-East of Rome. This settlement was inhabited since pre-Roman times, up to the middle ages. The objective of the Tusculum Project is to verify the town-planning of Tusculum and to obtain information about the location, shape, depth and size of the hypothesised buried buildings. With these aims, multi-methodological geophysical surveys have been carried out in the time range 2016-2019 to locate the archaeological remains in different portions of the studied area and to verify the orientation of the underground aqueduct system. GPR and gradiometric surveys were carried out to investigate the archaeological remains, while ERT surveys, were employed to find evidence of undiscovered parts of the underground aqueduct system. These results, along with geological studies and historic evidence, are being examined by archaeologist to understand the limits of the town and how water was supplied to such a large, populated settlement. The obtained results show very good correspondence between the buried architecture, the geophysical anomalies and the archaeological excavations. A number of unexpected buried buildings were discovered, which were excavated in 2017 and 2018, which showed remains of buried public thermal bath and a large church with surrounding funerary area built in the Middle Ages.
In 2008, during a rescue excavation in the Sa Osa area, near the town of Cabras (Sardinia, Italy), a Nuragic settlement was discovered. The excavation revealed numerous pits, wells and structures dug ...by the local communities between the Early Copper Age and the Iron Age. These structures were interpreted as elements of a settlement mainly involved in primary production. The most remarkable structure is Well-N, radiocarbon and archaeologically dated to the Late Bronze Age, which has yielded large amounts of waterlogged plant remains, animal and fish bones and pottery. Despite the limited set of samples, the combination of macro-remain and pollen analyses in this unique context provides important information useful for exploring not only local subsistence systems but also human impact on the surrounding environment. Grapes and figs are the most abundant remains together with other fruits and edible vascular plants. Remains of melon and mulberry were identified being the earliest remains of these two species for Western Europe. Their presence may confirm early trade between Nuragic people and the eastern Mediterranean and/or African coasts. Intentional selection of wood suggests practices associated to the collection of raw material for specific technological demands. The presence of intestinal parasites in the pollen record points to the possible use of the well as a cesspit, at least in its later use, and this is one of the earliest evidence of this type of structures in prehistoric contexts.
A detailed magnetic survey combined with the study of magnetic properties and spectral analysis in the Tusculum archaeological site (Alban Hills, Italy) indicates the existence of magnetic anomalies ...(total field and gradient, showing amplitudes up to thousands of nT) resulting from combined geological and archaeological features. In this paper we propose a two-fold analysis based on both manual and automatic procedures for a precise characterization of those elements from total magnetic field and magnetic gradient profiles. The first, automated step consists in spectral analysis of a long (1.2 km) profile to define the dominant wavelengths related to geological and/or archaeological features. The second, manual step consists of the definition of a hierarchical pattern of magnetic anomalies, according to their amplitude and pervasiveness, in the selected (90 × 90 m) area. The defined anomaly pattern includes 1st-order, total field, magnetic anomaly (1000 nT, decreasing towards the North) related to the geological (volcanic) background, 2nd order anomalies (tens to hundreds of nT), showing a marked periodicity, revealed by spectral analysis, in the magnetic gradient in the 1.2 km long profile, and, finally, superimposed 3rd order anomalies (on the order of several nT). Most second-order and some of the third order anomalies are normal dipoles arranged in an orthogonal pattern in plan view, and can be interpreted as linked to the main roman walls of public buildings or roads. The magnetic susceptibility of most materials used in Roman constructions (volcanic tuff and basalt, whose lithology was characterized by means of thin sections) ranges from 600 to 110,000 × 10−6 S.I., contrasting with the overall lower susceptibility of soil fillings between walls, what explains most of the anomalies found. Magnetite and other iron oxides and sulphides are the main ferromagnetic phases in construction materials. Koenigsberger ratios of roman construction materials vary between 0.25 and 107 what explains for magnetic remanence to have played a certain (but limited) role in some particular magnetic anomalies.
•Magnetic survey as a proxy to geological and archaeological prospecting in volcanic areas.•Methodological guidelines for interpreting magnetic anomalies (1st, 2nd, 3rd order).•Spectral analysis as a tool for interpreting magnetic anomalies.•Geophysical (magnetic susceptibility and remanence) characterization of archaeological materials.•2.5D modeling of magnetic anomalies.
An overview of the economic profile of the visigothic (6th–8th AD) village of Gózquez, as exemplified by its faunal and botanical record, is presented. The site, located in the center of the Iberian ...Peninsula, has been one of the first Early Medieval rural sites in Spain to be extensively excavated in the context of preventive/rescue archaeology. Archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological data reveal a degree of integration between farming and stockbreeding that calls into question the traditionally wielded paradigm of medieval historiography, in particular the stereotype of precarious settlements (in residential terms) subjected to the limitations imposed by an economy of strict subsistence.
This article focuses on the analysis of plant remains (seeds/fruits, charcoal, pollen, spores, and non-pollen palynomorphs) from two archaeological sites (pre-Roman and Roman) located in Las Médulas, ...a cultural landscape, in the northwestern part of the Iberian Peninsula. The article explores the way the communities living in the area managed their environment and the impact of productive activities on the landscape. This research has shown the multiplicity of needs this landscape satisfied and the various ways these communities managed the surrounding environment through different productive activities (agriculture, animal husbandry, and mining amongst others).
Emmer wheat (
Triticum diccocum) has been positively identified from the stratigraphically oldest ceramic- and domesticated livestock-bearing level of El Mirón Cave in the Cantabrian Cordillera. The ...grain is AMS
14C-dated to 5550±40 BP. This date is congruent with six others from the same layer, higher within which were found other grains of wheat, including einkorn as well as emmer. Although wild ungulates (mainly red deer) were still hunted, abundant ovicaprines, together with small numbers of cattle and pigs, appear in this level-for the first time in the 40,000-year record at El Mirón. Potsherds (undecorated, but of very good quality) also appear abruptly and abundantly. However, the associated lithic assemblage contains specific tool types also found in late Mesolithic contexts in Cantabrian Spain. In addition to the full suite of Neolithic indicators at El Mirón, as confirmed by less unambiguous early agro-pastoral evidence from other sites in the Vasco-Cantabrian region, there are megalithic monuments both in the vicinity of the cave and throughout the region that are similarly dated. All these data tend to suggest that Neolithic adaptations—already present about a millennium earlier not only along the Mediterranean coast, but also much closer, to the southeast of the Cordillera—were quickly adopted as “a package” by Cantabrian Mesolithic foragers, possibly as a consequence of social contacts with Neolithic groups in southern France and/or the upper Ebro basin of north-central Spain.
The spread of agriculture in the Iberian Peninsula is documented from at least ca. 5600–5500 BC, although botanical data are absent or very limited for large areas. Archaeobotanical information shows ...from the beginning an imported agrarian system with a great diversity of crops: hulled and naked wheats and barleys, legumes such as pea, lentil, fava bean, vetches and grass peas, flax and poppy. This diversity of plants with different requirements, processing and uses, implies that the first farmers quickly imported or acquired a wide range of agrarian knowledge. Regional and inter-site agrarian differences are discussed in relation to factors like ecology, culture, use of the cultivated plants and management of the risk of crop failure. The adoption of farming resulted in significant ecological, economic, dietary, and social changes for the Neolithic people of Iberia.
This paper presents archaeobotanical results from the Neolithic levels (5,300—4,000 B.C.) of two recently excavated sites in northern Iberia: El Mirón cave (Cantabria) and the open-air site of Los ...Cascajos (Navarra). A cereal grain from El Mirón is currently the earliest domesticated plant remain from this region. Despite the large number of samples examined, plant remains are few. They include basically cereals (Triticum monococcum, T. dicoccum, T. aestivum/durum/turgidum and Hordeum vulgare) and some nuts and fruits (Corylus avellana, Quercus sp., Vitis sp., etc.). The presence of free-threshing wheats at El Mirón opens up an interesting subject for debate, as until now naked wheats have been absent from the early Neolithic archaeobotanical record of the coastal Cantabrian region. Hulled wheat chaff is the main plant component from Los Cascajos, south of the Cantabrian Cordillera in Navarra, indicating waste from processing activities. The association of barley almost exclusively with both a burial and a ritual vase in Los Cascajos could be related specific rituals or ceremonies.
Present-day hulled wheats from Spain Miller, T E; Lamont, E J; Peña-Chocarro, L ...
Cereal research communications,
01/1999, Letnik:
27, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Present-day Spanish hulled wheats, Triticum monococcum L., T. dicoccum (Schrank) Schulb. and T. spelta L. largely collected from the Asturias mountains have been grown and conserved at the John Innes ...Centre, Norwich, UK. A number of morphological characters have been recorded, including height, glume colour and pubescence, awn colour and grain colour. A preliminary screen of storage protein composition was also carried out. The value of these hulled wheats as a genetic resource and their possible unique origin is briefly discussed.
