Environmental evolution and anthropogenic forcing in the Garigliano coastal plain (Italy) during the Holocene

Abstract

The Garigliano alluvial-coastal plain, at the Latium-Campania border (Italy), witnessed a long-lasting history of human-environment interactions, as demonstrated by the rich archaeological knowledge. With the aim of reconstructing the evolution of the landscape and its interaction with human activity during the last millennia, new pollen results from the coastal sector of the Garigliano Plain were compared with the available pollen data from other nearby sites. The use of pollen data from both the coastal and marine environment allowed integrating the local vegetation dynamics within a wider regional context spanning the last 8000 years. The new pollen data presented in this study derive from the analysis of a core, drilled in the coastal sector, which intercepted the lagoon-marshy environments that occurred in the plain as a response to the Holocene transgression and subsequent coastal progradation. Three radiocarbon ages indicate that the chronology of the analyzed core interval ranges from c. 7200 to c. 2000 cal yr BP. The whole data indicate that a dense forest cover characterized the landscape all along the Prehistoric period, when a few signs of human activity are recorded in the spectra, such as cereal crops, pasture activity and fires. The main environmental changes, forced by natural processes (coastal progradation) but probably enhanced by reclamation works, started from the Graeco-Roman period and led to the reduction of swampy areas that favoured the colonisation of the outer plain.

Natural and Cultural Lost Landscape during the Holocene along the Central Tyrrhenian Coast (Italy)

“…The appearance of vegetation and its evolution in the Garigliano area are discussed in detail in [36,111,112]. Between 8200 and 5800 yr BP, in a coastal plain, a large forest cover, mainly consisting of Quercus deciduous, Alnus, Salix, Populus, and Juniperus, occurred.…”

“…Farther from the river channel are present mud and silt with local peaty levels or mollusk fragments and sandy bed with parallel lamination with Bittium reticulatum, Loripes lucinalis, Abra segmentum, and C. glaucum, in addition to A. beccarii, A. tepida, A. parkinsoniana, L. lobatula, H. germanica, and Cyperaceae, Poaceae, and Salicornia pollens. Dinoflagellates are in the southernmost part of the coastal plain [112], where this facies lies on the "Campanian Ignimbrite" volcanic deposits [111].…”

A high-resolution record of landscape changes and land use over the last 5000 years in western Calabria (S. Eufemia Gulf, southern Tyrrhenian Sea, Italy)

“…Roberts et al, 2019) and particularly in the central and southern Tyrrhenian areas (e.g. Di Lorenzo et al, 2021aLorenzo et al, , 2021bMensing et al, 2015;Mercuri, 2014;Russo Ermolli et al, 2018;Sadori et al, 2004;Stoddart et al, 2019) have used a multidisciplinary approach in which archeology and palynology support each other in the interpretation of societal and/or climatic dynamics.…”