Biology

This paper presents the study of parasite remains recovered in pollen samples collected from archaeological layers. Laboratory treatment enabled us to ob- tain very high concentrations of both pollen and parasite eggs from the same samples. The case study of the site of Piazza Garibaldi in Parma, a town in the Po plain, is reported. The site was a sacred area in Roman times and a market square in Medieval times (10th–11th century A.D.). Pollen, seeds, and fruits from the latter phase were collected from four Medieval pits and one cesspit. After a palynological treatment including sieving, floating, and light acetolysis, abundant quantities of parasite eggs were extracted. Human and animal parasite eggs belonging to Trichuris, Ascaris, Taenia/Echinococcus, Capillaria, Dicrocoelium, and Diphyllobothrium were found. The analyses of an- imal and plant remains identified in the same samples suggested that the pit infillings consisted of waste, human and animal excrements, deteriorated plant food, and refuse of grapes. Therefore, parasite remains help the inter- pretation of archaeobotanical data in identifying human behaviors and site functions.

Integration of pollen data from both marine and terrestrial cores contributes to the understanding of the timing of the climatic and human forces that shaped the cultural landscapes in the Italian peninsula. This paper focuses on the relation between natural and human land- scapes, and the development of the cultural landscape from the Bronze Age to the medieval period and modern times. Two records were studied within independent projects, first the marine core RF93-30, from the central Adriatic, with a sediment source area including the Po valley and which spans the last 7,000 years, and secondly, material from the site of Terramara di Montale, a Bronze Age settlement on the Po plain, which was occupied from approximately 3550–3200 cal. B.P. The original chronology of the marine core was developed by using the magnetic inclination of the secular variation record and two 14C dates carried out on benthic and planktic foraminifera at depths of 527 and 599 cm. Its pollen record shows a gradual irreversible trend towards increasing aridity since 5700 cal. B.P. and, just after around 5100 cal. B.P., a Picea decline and a Quercus
ilex type increase indicate less cool conditions. Human impact introduces rapid changes, such as the decrease of Abies alba, thinned by the reduction of precipitation and further cleared before or during the Early Bronze Age, followed by the fall of oaks. The latter started after around 3900 cal. B.P., and became evident at around 3600 cal. B.P. The gradual increase in signs of open landscape and woodland clearance correspond to the onset of Middle Bronze Age settlements in the Po valley, and to the development of the cultural landscape in the region. The impact of the terramare people includes woodland man- agement by coppicing, and division of the territory into a patchwork of pastures and fields. Dry environments are indicated mainly by Cichorioideae, resulting from the continued human pressure, and these spread since the Recent Bronze Age. Of the possible causes for the decline of the terramare, we suggest that climate would have been less important in the decline than in the onset phases. The later cultural landscapes are mainly indicated by the trends of the Olea, Juglans and Castanea (OJC) records, besides those of cereals. At around 700 cal. B.P., the ‘‘chestnut landscape’’ spread while modern times are shown by the finds of Zea mays.

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1. Introduction
Plants are basic elements of cultural evolution. Both their past and present uses and the development of human environments support this simple assumption. The effects of human action range from low influence to high impact on vegetation, depending on the scale (space) and duration (time) of its presence in a given territory (Mercuri et al., 2010a). The transformation of natural into cultural landscapes is the result of millennia of human activities. These have had direct and indirect effects on the environment that led, and still lead, to clear changes in vegetation cover (Fægri and Iversen, 1989). The life sciences firstly investigate these changes by exploring the morphological and genetic diversity of flora, and
* Corresponding author. E-mail address: annamaria.mercuri@unimore.it (A.M. Mercuri).
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Pollen data from three off-site records and twenty-six on-site (archaeological) sites are reviewed to investigate the development of cultural landscapes through the history of the olive, walnut and chestnut trees in the Italian peninsula from the Late Glacial to late Holocene. The spread of these trees, which have been gathered or cultivated since ancient times, though not marked by high values in pollen diagrams, is an important indicator of increasing human activity and anthropization in the Mediterranean area.
The sum of Olea, Juglans and Castanea percentages in pollen spectra constitutes the OJC curve. The off-site records discussed are core RF93-30 from the Adriatic Sea (last 7000 years), and cores PALB94-1E of Lago Albano and PNEM94-1B of Lago di Nemi, two lakes in the Latium region (last 13,000 years). The on-site records are located in several regions (Veneto, Emilia Romagna, Tuscany, Basilicata, Calabria, and Sicily) and in the Republic of San Marino. Their chronology spans approximately from the Bronze to the Renais- sance ages, from 4200 to 500 BP. The simultaneous presence of OJC in the off-sites and in all the archaeo- logical sites confirms that these trees were widespread in the Italian peninsula during the last four millennia. The OJC pollen sum shows low values but Olea, Castanea and Juglans are common in Bronze age sites from northern Italy, when their percentages increase in the off-site records. In Hellenistic and Roman times, there are sharp increments of their curves in the off-sites, and values of Olea are especially high in archaeological sites of southern Italy. The highest values of OJC, especially due to Castanea, are found in records of the Middle ages. Juglans is significant but less frequent in both the archaeological sites and the off-sites.
The cultivation of walnut and chestnut trees in pre-Roman times may have included local stands. The nurturing for wood may have had negative effects on pollen fallout while the flowering of plants was favoured to obtain fruits.
As humans exploited the natural resources they interfered with the distribution of useful plants. The development of human environments in a modern sense, however, is a relatively recent phenomenon. It has largely caused the expansion of complex agrarian landscapes, including fields, pastures and groves.