Tiziana Gonnelli

Archaeobotany in Florence (Italy): Landscape and urban development from the late Roman to the Middle Ages

Archaeological excavations in Florence (Italy) offered the opportunity of collecting archaeobotanical data along stratigraphic sequences and pits from late Roman to Middle Ages; until now, no archaeobotanical data of this range of time were available for Florence. To achieve a more comprehensive reconstruction of the antique landscape and of the plant uses in the city, the results of plant micro- and macro-remain analyses were compared. During the late Roman Period, mixed oak forests covered the surrounding hills, while only scattered riverine thickets grew in the Arno river plain, which was mostly open. In the city, the increase in richness of cultivated plants, weeds and ruderals follows the advancement of urbanization from the late Roman to the Middle Ages when the abundance of remains of cereals, figs, grapevines and other fruits showed that cultivation and/or food processing were performed close to and even within the town wall. Peaks of heather (Erica spp.) pollen suggested that its flowering branches were introduced in the site and possibly used as building material or for the maintenance of the Arno river bank. Thus, this integrated archaeobotanical approach provided new insights into the environmental and ethnobotanical history of Florence, highlighting the occurrence of horticulture within the city wall.

Pollen morphology of trees, shrubs and woody herbs of the coastal plain and the monsoon slopes of Dhofar (Sultanate of Oman)

Summary This paper describes the pollen morphology of the most common trees, shrubs and woody herbs growing in the coastal plain and the escarpment of Dhofar, a wide region in southern Oman. The plant habit and habitat are also reported.

Investigating the present vegetation to understand the past one: “modern analogues” in the Sultanate of Oman

The study of the present-day pollen rain in modern sites reveals the relationship between vegetation and relative pollen spectra, and provides a useful key for the interpretation of the past pollen records resulting from palaeoenvironmental researches. The modern sites, or “modern analogues”, are accurately selected and considered paradigmatic models. In this paper the first results of two archaeobotanical studies carried out in two different areas of the Sultanate of Oman are presented: Salut (northern Oman) and the ancient town of Sumhuram (southern Oman, Dhofar).