Ricerc@Sapienza

Lake Ohrid (Albania/FYROM) is the oldest continuously existing lake in Europe. It is located in a graben formed during the last phases of Alpine orogenesis the north-eastern Mediterranean region at 693 m a.s.l. It is included in the UNESCO “World Heritage Site” list since 1979 and represents an important hotspot of biodiversity, as it hosts over two hundred endemic species.

Lago di Vico is a volcanic lake located 50 km northwest of Rome, 40 km from the Tyrrhenian Sea, in central Italy. It has a max. depth of 50 m, an elevation of 510 m a.s.l., a diameter of ca. 5 km, a surface of ca. 12 km2, and a catchment area of ca. 40 km2. It is located in the central collapse caldera of the Vico volcanic district. The catchment, exclusively formed by volcanic rocks, is delimited by the edge of the caldera, peaking 965 m a.s.l. at Monte Fogliano where an estimate of the rainfall provided a value of about 2000 mm.

Lake Ohrid is considered as one of the deepest and oldest tectonic lake in Europe. A drilling campaign was carried out in 2013 as part of the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP), within the scope of the Scientific Collaboration on Past Speciation Conditions in Lake Ohrid (SCOPSCO) project. This lake is located at middle altitudes in a rift basin (693 m) surrounded by high mountain ranges and provides an excellent opportunity to study the impact of past climate changes on mid- to high-altitude forests.

The top 12 m of a lacustrine sediment sequence from Lago di Mezzano (42°36?N, 11°46?E, 452 a.s.l., Latium, central Italy) have been palynologically investigated. The chronology was established on the basis of radiocarbon dates, measures of annual laminations and volcanic ashes. The continuous sequence provides new fundamental information on the Lateglacial and Holocene, periods often fragmented in Italian pollen records, identifying vegetation dynamics and climate changes occurring in the last 15,300 years.

In this article, we present new, high-resolution, pollen results obtained from the DEEP site sequence recovered from Lake Ohrid (Albania/FYROM) for the Last Interglacial Complex (LIC), corresponding to Marine Isotope Stage 5 (MIS 5) of the marine isotope stratigraphy. LIC covers the period between 130 and 70 ka and includes the Eemian (Last Interglacial, LI) and the succession of stadial and interstadial phases of the Early Last Glacial.

The archaeobotanical analyses carried out at the archaeological site of Motya (Sicily, Italy), a small island found in the Marsala Lagoon, in Western Sicily (Italy), are presented. Although the Phoenician-Punic period (late 8th century BC – 397 BC) represents the main occupational phase of the archaeological settlement, the island was occupied by indigenous populations since the 17th century BC and continued to be inhabited after the Siege of Motya (397/6 BC).