Adil GÜNER, Vehbi ESER - optima

ANCIENT FLORAS, VEGETATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION
AND MAN-PLANT RELATIONSHIPS:
CASE STUDIES FROM ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES
Marta Mariotti LIPPI
Dipartimento di Biologia Evoluzionistica – Biologia VegetaleUniversità degli Studi di Firenze, Italia,
mariotti@unifi.it
Archaeobotany provides information on the ancient floras, the vegetation which surrounded the
archaeological sites, and the interaction between human populations and plants.
Humans are able to successfully settle in a large variety of habitats and to find solutions for their
food supply using different strategies. Over time, they acquired specific techniques and evolved
subsistence strategies which differently impacted the territory, becoming an important agent in
shaping landscapes. Archeobotany includes many different fields of research which concern
macro-or micro-remains. Crossing results furnishes not merely a sum of information but it
multiplies the meaning of single information, allowing detailed and unambiguous interpretation
of the results. This is the case of the wood and palynological analyses in the Garden of “Casti
Amanti” in Pompeii, Italy, which allowed reconstructing the geometrical asset of the flowerbeds.
The precise position of Juniperus and Rosa in the garden was detected.
Archaeobotanical investigations provide information about plant gathering, diffusion and
cultivation. Humans voluntarily introduced plants in the territory where they lived, but many
weeds were also involuntarily introduced. Regarding the plants which were voluntarily
introduced, ancient documents must be taken in consideration. On the contrary, involuntarily
introduced plants can only be recorded in sediments. In Pompeii, the finding of Citrus pollen
grains reopens the discussion about the introduction of Citrus lemon in the Mediterranean area.
The same research may also offer information about wood technology, seasons of gathering or
feeding, geographic origin of materials. For example, the content of a resin found in an Egyptian
coffin from Saqqara allowed establishing the geographic origin of this material used in the burial
rites.
The ancient natural vegetation is generally studied out of archaeological contexts, because in the
human settlements it has been strongly affected by human activity. However, in same cases,
archaeological sites have the peculiarity of amplifying the record of past events. This is the case
of the catastrophic floods which occurred in Pisa, Italy, during the Roman time.
Keywords: Archaeobotany, plant remains, human-plant interaction
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Oral Lectures