Paleobotany

AUTHORS: Alessandro Peinetti, Silvia Rita Amicone, Diego Angelucci, Giorgia Aprile, Fiorenza Bortolami, Lorenzo Castellano, Fabio Cavulli,  Enrico Croce, Cosimo D’Oronzo, Fabiana Dumont, Girolamo Fiorentino, Giulia Fronza,  Giorgio Gaj, Claudio Moffa, Italo Maria Muntoni, Annaluisa Pedrotti, Maria Pia Riccardi, Mauro Rottoli, Claudia Speciale, Giovanni Tasca, Carlo Veca, Marica Venturino, Giovanni Vezzoli.

ABSTRACT
The discovery of remains of daub, especially burned, is very common in Italian pre- and protohistoric sites. This collective work aims to summarize the researches carried out over the last thirty years in Italian contexts of the Late Prehistory, from the Neolithic to the Iron Age. The subjects considered in this paper will be the selection of raw materials and their preparation, the realization of the timber frame or of the the wattle, the putting of the raw earth on the frame and the technical interactions. A number of case studies will be taken into account, in order to draw up a synthesis of the different techniques attested in Italian territory, looking for geographical or chronological constants or variables. The methodological approaches implemented by the various authors will be taken into account.

An exceptionally large and well-preserved drepanophycalean lycophyte specimen from the Early Emsian Hunsrück Slate exhibits branching morphology and architecture that suggest previously unrecognized diversity of drepanophycalean lycophytes in the German Early Devonian. The specimen shows long prostrate axes giving rise to both rooting axes and erect leafy, unbranched axes via K-branching. Rhizomatous growth along the substrate promoted rapid vegetative expansion of the plant forming monoclonal patches, potential adaptations to colonizing an unstable deltaic environment. K-branches including dormant buds may have allowed resurrection of the shoot system following burial by sediment or damage to growing shoot apices. Cutbank erosion may have uprooted parts of the plants, which were then transported into the open marine areas and eventually buried in the Hunsrück Slate depositional environment. We hypothesize that remains of Late Silurian/Early Devonian plants (and possibly Prototaxites) may have drifted for many kilometers and were large enough to raft small organisms over considerable distances. Thus, the Late Silurian/Early Devonian may have witnessed the earliest passive oceanic dispersal by rafting of terrestrial invertebrates and therefore marks a crucial time in Earth’s history with respect to this important paleobiogeographic factor.

Chemical analysis of archaeological objects is an important part of current investigations. In the presented study, a soil from an archaeological vessel from rescue excavation close to the village Držovice (Central Moravia Region, Czech Republic; findings dated to Eneolithic period) was analyzed using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry and firstly in archaeological science by atmospheric pressure solids analysis probe with atmospheric pressure chemical ionization mass spectrometry. Miliacin, a chemical marker of a broomcorn millet, was unambiguously confirmed by both techniques. The obtained results can help to understand the diet habits of Corded Ware population and connection between Central Europe and Asia, where broomcorn millet has been domesticated. The identification of miliacin as a “chemical imprint” of millet from the end of Eneolithic period of Moravia is therefore extraordinarily important.

10th International Association of Landscape Ecology (IALE) World Congress University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy, 1-5 July 2019
Call for Abstracts: deadline 25 February 2019, http://www.iale2019.unimib.it/program/abstracts-submission/
Symposium 46:Landscape trajectories during the long Anthropocene: dialogues between ecology and archaeology
Organizers: Giuseppe Bazan & Angelo Castrorao Barba

From the micro to the global scale, the human impact is the real protagonist of the Anthropocene across the long-term timescale. It is impossible to look at the environment and the landscape without considering the long processes of anthropic activities. The driving forces in landscape change are strongly related to historical dynamics. Changes in political regimes, social structures, economic modes of productions, cultural and religious influences – all the traditional domain of the Humanities – are phenomena entangled with many ecological and environmental factors. Understanding landscapes in the Anthropocene is impossible today without a cross-disciplinary approach. During the last few decades, the discipline of Archaeology has especially increased its focus on human-environment interactions and landscape formative-processes. Landscape trajectories can be investigated through two different points of view. Vanished landscapes are the main object of study for many " archaeologies " (landscape archaeology; environmental archaeology; geoarchaeology) and " paleo " disciplines (paleoecology; paleoclimatology; paleogeography) that aim to reconstruct the non-visible past. The second approach focuses on the contemporary landscape as a palimpsest formed by various historical layers in which evidence of the relationship between the human footprint and ecological patterns can be detected. Nevertheless, both of these approaches, one based on " hidden traces " and the other on current layered contexts, share a concept of Landscape as a complex and heterogeneous mosaic of spaces where it is possible to read both the temporal dynamics (historical stratification) and the specific characteristics of individual patches situated in various ecotopes, a series of hierarchical relationships between climatic conditions, substrates, landforms, soils, vegetation and human activities. The main aim in this session is to combine and stimulate an interdisciplinary debate between the (many) Archaeologies, Landscape Ecology and Environmental Studies in order to address the following issues across different regions all over the world. The following themes will be explored: a) Methods for multidisciplinary analysis of formation, change, abandonment and resilience in rural landscapes (from Prehistory to the Present day); b) Archaeology as an " ecological " discipline; c) Historical perspectives of relationships between man and plants (domestication, introduction, extinction, cultivation, exploitation and disturbance of natural vegetation) in forming the plant landscape; d) Anthropocene landscapes: evaluating the human impact on the landscape from historical and ecological perspectives. Contributions regarding different geographical areas and focusing on the session's key themes from Archaeological and/or Ecological disciplines will be strongly encouraged (single excavations contextualised in a wider territorial context; regional and micro-regional data from survey and landscape archaeology projects) as well as broader overviews. The papers in this session will offer a methodological dialogue between historical and archaeological issues and landscape ecology.