Agriculture, Climate, and Society in Italy 2000 BCE – 1000 CE
Program
10.30 – 10.35 Welcome & Introduction to BrIAS.
Frits Heinrich - BrIAS Program Director | Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
10.35 – 10.45 Introduction: Agriculture, Climate and Society in Italy 2000 BCE–1000 CE.
Laura Motta - BrIAS Fellow | University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA.
10.45 – 11.15 Human-animal-environment relationships in the north-western Adriatic lagoons: the transition from the Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages.
Mauro Rizzetto1,2 & Silvia Garavello2 - 1BrIAS Fellow | 2Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, Italy.
11.15 – 11.45 Hydrological changes during the Roman Climatic Optimum in northern Tuscany (Central Italy) as evidenced by speleothem records and archaeological data.
Monica Bini - Department of Earth Sciences, University of Pisa, Italy.
11.45 – 12.15 Agricultural systems and land management inferred from Palynology: evidence from the Bronze Age Terramare culture and the Roman Peasants in Tuscany (Italy).
Anna Maria Mercuri, Eleonora Clò and Assunta Florenzano - Laboratorio di Palinologia e Paleobotanica, Dipartimento di Scienze Vita, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia – NBFC, National Biodiversity Future Center, Palermo, Italy.
12.15 – 13.30 Lunch Break
13.30 – 14.00 Millet(s), social changes and climatic instability in N-Italy at the end of the 2nd mill. BCE.
Marta Dal Corso - Department of Geosciences, University of Padua, ERC GEODAP, Italy
14.00 – 14.30 Environmental settings of agricultural practices in Central Italy during the first half of the first millennium BCE.
Fanny Gaveriaux - Gabii Project.
14.30 – 14.45 Disentangling Agriculture, Climate, and Society in Central Italy during the first half of the first millennium BCE.
Laura Motta - BrIAS Fellow | University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA.
14.45 – 15.15 Coffee Break
15.15 – 15.45 Landscape exploitation and climate in Roman Central Italy – A view from archaeological survey data and environmental studies.
Devi Taelman - BrIAS Junior Fellow | Vrije Universiteit Brussel
15.45 – 16.30 Final Discussion
Abstracts
Human-animal-environment relationships in the north-western Adriatic lagoons: the transition from
the Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages
Mauro Rizzetto1,2 & Silvia Garavello2 - 1BrIAS Fellow | 2Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, Italy.
Zooarchaeology – the study of animal remains from archaeological sites – informs on all aspects of past human-animal-environment relationships. This presentation will introduce the objectives and methodological approach of the InTer AquAS Project, which relies on the historical and environmental contextualization of zooarchaeological analyses. InTer AquAS will integrate the evidence from terrestrial and aquatic archaeofaunal remains from the Venetian Lagoon, the Marano-Grado Lagoon, and the coast of Romagna – the case-study regions of the project –, in order to shed light on the changing interactions between human communities, domestic and wild animals, and the lagoonal environments during the Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages. The study will inform on animal husbandry and agricultural production, as well as on hunting and fishing practices within the peculiar environmental framework of the lagoons. Other ongoing research projects contribute to a detailed reconstruction of past food production practices and human-environment interactions, covering the early and later Middle Ages.
Hydrological changes during the Roman Climatic Optimum in northern Tuscany (Central Italy) as
evidenced by speleothem records and archaeological data.
Monica Bini - Department of Geosciences, University of Padua, ERC GEODAP, Italy.
Study of the climate in the Mediterranean basin during different historical periods has taken on a particular importance, particularly regarding its role (together with other factors) in the evolution of human settlement patterns. Although the Roman age is traditionally considered a period with a favourable climate, recent studies have revealed considerable complexity in terms of regional climate variations. The comparison of the hydrological change from speleothem proxy records with flood reconstructions from archaeological sites for Northern Tuscany (central Italy) allows us to identify a period of oscillating climatic conditions culminating in a multidecadal dry event during the 1st century BCE, followed by a century of increased precipitation at the beginning of the Roman Empire and subsequently a return to drier conditions in the 2nd century CE. The period of rainfall increase documented by the speleothems agrees with both the archaeological flood record as well as historical flood data available for the Tiber River, ca. 300 km to the south. Lastly, other speleothems data from Reella Cave suggest a return to wetter conditions following the 3rd and 4th centuries CE. This aspect is confirmed by several historical sources describing miracles linked to the water use (e.g., San Frediano Miracle).
Agricultural systems and land management inferred from Palynology: evidence from the Bronze Age
Terramare culture and the Roman Peasants in Tuscany (Italy).
Anna Maria Mercuri, Eleonora Clò and Assunta Florenzano - Laboratorio di Palinologia e Paleobotanica, Dipartimento di Scienze Vita, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia – NBFC, National Biodiversity Future Center, Palermo.
Palynology integrated with archaeological and environmental research is a key tool to investigate the complex relationships between humans and environment, connecting the environmental changes with crisis or cultural adaptations of ancient societies. This contribution reports on agricultural landscapes and land management reconstructions provided by palynological research carried out on the Terramare sites (Middle Bronze Age, XVI-XII century BC) in the central-southern Po Plain, and Roman small farmhouses (ca. I BC-I AD) in Tuscany. Palynological data from villages and ditches of Terramare sites show continuous transformation in flora composition and plant communities, suggesting that the development of a complex agro-sylvo-pastoral system has started in that time. The unfavorable concomitance of overexploitation of natural resources and climatic-triggered environmental pressure led to the breakdown of the Terramare civilization in the Recent Bronze Age. In the second case study, pollen data from the interdisciplinary research within the Roman Peasant Project show that the Roman farms in southern Tuscany were built in patches of fields and pastures, in a territory exploited by farmers and peasant people. The local land-use types and different management strategies inferred from palynology provide an important contribution to the knowledge of biodiversity patterns and implications for a sustainable land management in these regions.
Millet(s), social changes and climatic instability in N-Italy at the end of the 2nd mill. BCE.
Marta Dal Corso - Department of Geosciences, University of Padua (Italy), ERC GEODAP.
2023 is the International Year of Millets, as declared by the United Nations General Assembly. FAO encourages people around the world to spread the use of these small-grained, resilient and noutritious cereals. Recent archaeobotanical research identified a period back in the second half of the II mill. BCE during the Bronze Age, when broomcorn millet/Panicum miliaceum became widespread out of its area of domestication in China up to Europe. Other two millets, foxtail millet/Setaria italica and barnyard millet/Echinochloa crus-galli, are also widely attested in the European archaeobotanical records of Bronze Age sites. In the cultural and technological developments of that time, the diversity of crops collides with a period of increasing aridity and probable climatic instability documented in different parts of the Mediterranean. This paper aims at tracing the lines of these developments with a focus on Northern Italian case-studies.
Environmental settings of agricultural practices in Central Italy during the first half of the first
millennium BCE.
Fanny Gaveriaux - Gabii Project.
The Iron age and Archaic periods in central Tyrrhenian Italy witnessed an increase in the socio-economic and political complexity alongside with a demographic growth. These changes are associated with urbanization processes, which lead to the emergence of the first cities in the region. The agricultural systems and food production strategies needed to feed this increasing population, as well as the environmental and climatic conditions that supported those changes, are still difficult to assess due to the lack of appropriate proxies. In recent years, new archaeological excavations at three of these early urban centers, Rome, Gabii and Tarquinia, have provided charred archaeobotanical assemblages (grains, fruits and wood). In addition to the archeobotanical and anthracological studies, carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analysis on charred cereal grains (barley and emmer) allows the investigation of farming practices, field environments, and climatic oscillations. The first δ15N results indicate no manuring practices in the fields. However, the Δ13C values show possible distinctions in the management of the crops as well as similar trends common to the three archaeological sites suggesting regional environmental events.
Disentangling Agriculture, Climate, and Society in Central Italy during the first half of the first
millennium BCE.
Laura Motta - BrIAS Fellow | University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA.
The possible climatic trends suggested by the new isotopic data on cereal crops from Rome, Gabii, and Tarquinii is discussed in the historical context and compared with the abundant palynological and hydrological record available for Central Italy. For Rome in particular, recent research has shown a rapid change in the river Tiber regime with a dramatic increase in flooding events during the archaic period. However, is it even possible to discriminate climatic causation from anthropogenic explanations in what has been defined as the mid/late Holocene environmental mélange? Here we consider the issue of scale that relate both to the chronological resolution and to the spatial range to address the complexity of regional climatic oscillations, and take into account the difficulties with identifying the variety of cultural responses and adaptive human behaviors in the archaeological record.
Landscape exploitation and climate in Roman Central Italy – A view from archaeological survey data
and environmental studies.
Devi Taelman - BrIAS Junior Fellow | Vrije Universiteit Brussel
“The Roman Empire fell victim to the Late Antique Little Ice Age.” This idea is widely accepted among the general public and among scholars outside history or archaeology. The end of the so-called Roman Climatic Optimum, it is claimed, caused the economic, political and military stress of the third century CE, and eventually led to the fall of the Western Roman Empire. In recent year, this view is increasingly being criticised as environmental determinism. Surprisingly little analysis can be found in much of the publications of the actual impact of changes in temperature and precipitation on agricultural productivity and agricultural strategies, even though these studies present the food supply as the link between climate change and societal disruption. This talk presents some results of an in-depth study on the potential and actual impact of climate change on Roman agricultural strategies and systems in Central Italy from the Late Republic to Late Antiquity. Key points are (1) a critical evaluation of the available paleoclimatological proxies available for Roman Central Italy, and (2) the spatial and temporal patterns in human habitation and exploitation of the countryside, the data on which are provided by systematic archaeological surveys.