Ricerc@Sapienza

Although the amount of data on the Italian Copper Age has increased significantly in the last decades, little is known about the relationship between humans and the environment. Material culture suggests the occurrence of significant social interactions throughout the Italian Peninsula, while the funerary practices indicate that Copper Age groups were strongly rooted in their territories. Here, we attempt to define the relations within Copper Age groups by investigating one of the main culturally-constructed aspects of a society: dietary practices.

The present study concerns the analysis of the plant remains found in the archaeological site of Motya, a
small islet (ca. 40 ha) located in the Stagnone di Marsala, a coastal lagoon of western Sicily. Due to its
strategic, harbored position in the middle of the Mediterranean and the presence of fresh-water springs, the
site was chosen by Phoenicians as a settlement in the 8th century BCE until the siege of Motya in 397/6 BCE.
The study of macro-remains, retrieved using bucket floatation, focused on two closed contexts: the votive

The current research aims to reconstruct plant cultivation and plant use of the Phoenicians at Motya, a small island set along the Western Sicilian coast, through the study of macro- (seeds and charcoal) and micro-fossils (pollen) and the support of archaeological evidence. The archaeological settlement is most known for its Phoenician-Punic occupation (late 8th century B.C.