Adil GÜNER, Vehbi ESER - optima

PLANTS AND CULTURE IN EUROMEDITERRANEAN AREA:
ARCHAEOBOTANY AND THE PaCEM NETWORK
Anna Maria MERCUR� 1 , Laura SADOR� 2 , Marta Bandini MAZZANT� 1 , Jaromir BENES
3 , Giovanna BOS� 1 , Annamaria CIARALLO 4 , Emel Oybak DÖNMEZ 5 , Ahmed Gamal
FAHMY 6 , Marco G�ARD�N� 2 , José Antonio LÓPEZ-SÁEZ 7 , Philippe MAR�NVAL 8 , Alessia
MAS� 2 , Leonor PEÑA-CHOCARRO 7 , Anaya SARPAK� 9 , Soultana Maria VALAMOT� 10
1 Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Italy – annamaria.mercuri@unimore.it
2 Università Sapienza di Roma, Italy – laura.sadori@uniroma1.it
3 University of South Bohemia, Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic - benes@prf.jcu.cz
4 Soprintendenza Beni Archeologici di Napoli e Pompei, Italy - laboratorio.sap@virgilio.it
5 Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey - polen@hacettepe.edu.tr
6 University of Helwan, Egypt - afahmy658@gmail.com
7 Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales (CCHS), Madrid, Spain - leonor.chocarro@cchs.csic.es
8 CNRS Toulouse, France - marinval@cict.fr
9 Tsikalaria, 72300 Souda, Chania, Crete, Greece - asarpaki@otenet.gr
10 University of Thessaloniki, Greece - sval@hist.auth.gr
As a follow-up to an EU PaCE project (1) , and under the same key-words ‘Plants and
Culture’, we wish extend our archaeobotanical network into Mediterranean countries. The
main aim of this PaCEM network is to establish joint and coordinated associations with
archaeological sites belonging to major ancient civilizations.
Archaeobotany is useful both to know how a population exploits the environment, and to
understand the evolution of cultural landscape (2,3) through the use of plants, which is at the
core of understanding modern human impact and sustainability. These issues also include
conditions of life and diet, the exploitation of domestic and wild plants, the relationship
between environmental modifications and cultural patterns as a result of human settlements.
Social responses to climate change are the result of both human perception of nature and
adaptation to its changing environment. (4)
All known techniques for the archaeological recovery of plants and analyses should be
applied consistently to all samples. Distinguishing signs of anthropic action, influence and
impact by means of not-intentional or intentional plant management can be achieved not only
by approaching the problem within a multidisciplinary framework, but also by parallel studies
carried out both on pollen and macroremains. It is only through this integrated approach that a
more complete picture of the past landscape can be achieved. The first step of the activity of
this developing project will be the creation of the website of the PaCEM Mediterranean net.
Keywords: plants, archaeobotany, cultural heritage, Mediterranean basin
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