L’homme et son environnement. L’approche interdisciplinaire sur l’évolution des territoires insulaires de l’archipel du Kvarner (Croatie)

Abstract

Mankind and its environment: an interdisciplinary approach on the development of the insulare territories of Kvarner archipelago (Croatia) The present article aims to introduce the IATEKA programme “Interdisciplinary Approach to the Territorial Evolution of the Kvarner Archipelago” and its first results, started in 2018 and focused on examining the long-term relationship between humans and their environment, with a particular focus on the construction, management and transformation of the island territories and landscapes of the Kvarner Archipelago, as well as the fluctuation of the different populations and their impact and/or adjustment to the particular environment. As an interdisciplinary programme, methods and results obtained in the field of sedimentary and landscape archaeology, physical anthropology or bioarchaeology, specific analyses such as stable isotopes, ancient DNA, paleobiology and sedimentology are brought to a new level of inter-examination. Although this programme aims to approach the questions of human-environment interactions over a long, or even very long period in as comprehensive a manner as possible and through an interdisciplinary approach, the article focuses only on the results of the palynological studies, relating to the period between Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Indeed, the results obtained on the lake sediments allow us to better understand the evolution of the environment of one of the islands of the archipelago, the island of Cres. It also seemed impossible to approach the changes observed for the period of Late Antiquity stricto sensu without addressing, even if only briefly, the character traits of the region that were established from the beginning of Antiquity and the effective presence of Roman power in the region. [Authors]