Adil GÜNER, Vehbi ESER - optima

ARCHAEOBOTANY, HISTORICAL AND ICONOGRAPHICAL
SOURCES, FROM ROMAN TO MEDIEVAL AGE TO RECONSTRUCT
THE DIFFUSION OF PRUNUS PERSICA IN ITALY
Laura SADORI 1 , Emilia ALLEVATO 2 , Giovanna BOSI 3 , Giulia CANEVA 4 , Elisabetta
CASTIGLIONI 5 , Alessandra CELANT 1 , Gaetano Di PASQUALE 2 , Marco GIARDINI 1 ,
Marta Bandini MAZZANTI 3 , Anna Maria MERCUR� 3 , Rossella R�NALD� 3 , Mauro
ROTTOL� 5 , Francesca SUSANNA 1
1 Dipartimento di Biologia Vegetale - Università Sapienza di Roma, piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185, ROMA –
Italy – laura.sadori@uniroma1.it
2 Dipartimento di Arboricoltura, Botanica e Patologia vegetale - Università di Napoli Federico II, via Università
100, 80055, PORTICI – Italy
3 Dipartimento di Biologia - Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, viale Caduti in Guerra 127, 41121,
MODENA – Italy
4 Dipartimento di Biologia - Università degli Studi Roma Tre, Viale Marconi, 446 – 00146, ROMA - Italy
5 Laboratorio di Archeobiologia - Musei Civici di Como, piazza Medaglie d’Oro 1, 22100 COMO – Italy
This research was done in the framework of the activities of the EU PaCE project, as a joint
work on archeobotany and iconography. Authors are members of the Palaeobotany group and
Applied Botany group of SBI and of the IWGP. The parallel use of historical sources,
iconographical portrayals, and archaeobotanical data supplies information on the introduction
of peach tree into Italy.
Prunus persica (L.) Batsch, widely cultivated in the Mediterranean basin, is native to western
China. The diagnostic features of peach wood and pollen are not sufficient to discriminate the
species, while endocarps allow the determination to the species level.
Columella (Rei Rusticae Libri, 60-65 AD) and Plinius (Naturalis Historia, 77-78 AD)
mention mala persica. Plinius indicates that this fruit tree was introduced thirty years before
the writing of his work (ca. 40-50 AD). He also reports different varieties and the great
commercial value of the fruit. The oldest artistic representations of peaches are found in wall
paintings of the 1 st century AD from Herculaneum, and probably also in “festoons” and
sculptures of Augustan age from Rome. The oldest finds (first decades of 1st cent. AD) are
from northern Italy, from both a town context (Modena) and two necropolis ones (Angera,
Manerbio) and probably from Naples harbour. These finds would antedate peach introduction
in Italy at least of one decade.
Abundant finds from the Medieval site of Imola confirm the diffusion of this fruit also in the
following centuries. Sparse finds are from Medieval/Renaissance sites from the northern and
central Italian peninsula (e.g. the Este Court of Ferrara), while we ignore the existence of
contemporary records from southern and insular Italy. A future challenge of this study will be
determining the amount of different cultivars, possibly using both the morphometric
parameters and the aDNA analysis of stone endocarps.
Keywords: peach, archaeobotany, cultural heritage, Italy
131
67
Posters