Abstract

The ancient harbour of Pisa, Portus Pisanus, was one of Italy’s most influential seaports for many centuries. Nonetheless, very little is known about its oldest harbour and the relationships between environmental evolution and the main stages of harbour history. The port complex that ensured Pisa’s position as an economic and maritime power progressively shifted westwards by coastal progradation, before the maritime port of Livorno was built in the late 16th century AD. The lost port is, however, described in the early 5th century AD as being “a large, naturally sheltered embayment” that hosted merchant vessels, suggesting an important maritime structure with significant artificial infrastructure to reach the city. Despite its importance, the geographical location of the harbour complex remains controversial and its environmental evolution is unclear. To fill this knowledge gap and furnish accurate palaeoenvironmental information on Portus Pisanus, we used bio- and geosciences. Based on stratigraphic data, the area’s relative sea-level history, and long-term environmental dynamics, we established that at ~200 BC, a naturally protected lagoon developed and hosted Portus Pisanus until the 5th century AD. The decline of the protected lagoon started at ~1350 AD and culminated ~1500 AD, after which time the basin was a coastal lake.

Highlights

  • While Italy’s rich maritime history has sharpened focus on ancient harbours and human impacts in port basins (e.g. Altinum-Venice, Portus Lunae-Luni, Portus-Rome, Ostia-Rome, Neapolis-Naples)[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8], the evolution of Portus Pisanus, the powerful seaport of the city of Pisa (Italy, Tuscany), was, until recently, largely unknown[9,10,11,12,13,14,15]

  • We present a 10,500-year Relative Sea-Level (RSL) reconstruction to understand the role of long-term sea-level rise in shaping the harbour basin

  • We report an 8000-year reconstruction of environmental dynamics in and around the harbour basin to establish when Portus Pisanus became a “naturally sheltered embayment”, reported in literary sources as the main hub of the ancient Pisa harbour system

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Summary

Introduction

While Italy’s rich maritime history has sharpened focus on ancient harbours and human impacts in port basins (e.g. Altinum-Venice, Portus Lunae-Luni, Portus-Rome, Ostia-Rome, Neapolis-Naples)[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8], the evolution of Portus Pisanus, the powerful seaport of the city of Pisa (Italy, Tuscany), was, until recently, largely unknown[9,10,11,12,13,14,15]. Recent archaeological excavations at Santo Stefano ai Lupi corroborate both the classical sources and Targioni Tozzetti’s description with the discovery of portions of sea bed covered by fragments of ancient pottery (dated to the 6th–5th centuries B.C. and to a period between the 1st century BC and the 6th century AD), ballast stones, part of a small stone dock, some buildings including a warehouse, and a necropolis dated to the 4th–5th centuries AD14,34,35 These structures belong to Portus Pisanus’ harbour system, but just a small area of the ancient port city and the adjacent basin has been excavated. These environmental data were compared and contrasted with the history of Pisa (written sources and archaeological data)

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