Flora-vegetation history and land use in Medieval Tuscany: The palynological evidence of a local biodiversity heritage

Abstract

This paper introduces the high resolution palynological analyses carried out on samples from four cores drilled in the coastal plains of the Cornia and Pecora rivers, southern Tuscany, Italy. This study provides new information on the landscape transformations that the area has undergone over the past 7500 years, with focus on Medieval times when settlement patterns and land use contributed the onset of the current landscape. The study area, considered one of the most important early centres of the European civilization, has been fully investigated by the ERC funded nEU-Med project through an interdisciplinary approach combining archaeological, geomorphological, chemical, and archaeobotanical analyses. Environmental features and resource availability were explored through pollen markers of natural environments and human activities suggesting similarities and dissimilarities between the two valleys. In the Cornia Valley, the high diversity and percentages of woody taxa is connected to agrarian exploitation with arboriculture, while the Pecora Valley had a mostly open landscape, with lower diversity and higher percentages of anthropogenic pollen indicators. In both valleys, the land was mainly exploited for grazing resources: the high presence of pasture indicators suggests that domesticated animals should have been an important local resource especially in Medieval times. Pastoral/breeding activities fit into a larger context of management of the territory with specific vocation (namely, salt and iron in these two valleys). The detailed palynological analysis and the comparison between the two valleys highlight the local character of these activities, probably carried out in a collateral way by the peasant communities between the 7th-12th centuries AD.