Ricerc@Sapienza

The archaeological landscape of the Tadrart Acacus massif (SW Libya, central Sahara) is made of sites testimony of complex systems of cultural-specific settlement and economic strategies stretching over millennia of occupation. Here, caves and rock shelters represent the main physiographic features exploited by prehistoric herders. Climate fluctuations, settlement patterns and economic strategies regulate the depositional and post-depositional processes documented in the excavated sites.

Prostatitis, a general term describing prostate inflammation, is a common disease that
could be sustained by bacterial or non-bacterial infectious agents. The efficacy of herbal extracts with
antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects for blunting the burden of inflammation and oxidative
stress, with possible improvements in clinical symptoms, is under investigation. Pollen extracts have
been previously reported as promising agents in managing clinical symptoms related to prostatitis.

A multi-proxy palaeoenvironmental investigation was conducted to reconstruct the Holocene history of coastal
landscape change in the lower Posada coastal plain of eastern Sardinia. In the Mediterranean region, coastal
modifications during the Holocene have been driven by a complex interplay between climate, geomorphological
processes and human activity. In this paper, millennial-scale human-sea level-environment interactions are investigated
near Posada, one of the largest coastal plains in eastern Sardinia. Biostratigraphic and palynological

A new high-resolution pollen record, spanning the last five millennia, is presented from the Gulf of Gaeta (Tyrrhenian Sea, central Italy), with the aim of verifying if any vegetation change occurred in the central

La storia della vegetazione degli ultimi 2000 anni nella penisola italiana è stata determinata da una complessa interazione di diversi fattori, tra i quali spiccano la storia delle società umane, i cambiamenti nell'uso del suolo e la successione di eventi climatici. Al fine di distinguere l’effetto di questi fattori, abbiamo svolto uno studio multidisciplinare di una carota di sedimenti marini campionata nel Golfo di Gaeta e interpretata alla luce di altre ricerche paleoambientali dell'Italia tirrenica.

The development and decline of alder floodplain forests and alder carrs along the Tyrrhenian coasts, in relation to sea level changes, geomorphological processes, human activity, and climate change are presented and discussed. A number of 22 pollen records, complemented by Alnus macrofossil data, document the presence of widespread alder populations in the coastal Tyrrhenian floodplains throughout the Holocene, although with different density from one site to the other, mostly depending on local hydrological conditions.

Diatomite deposits in the Sabatini Volcanic District (central Italy) represent valuable archives to investigate both Middle Pleistocene vegetation dynamics and geochemistry of proximal products of volcanic eruptions, which provide crucial geochronological markers for a large region of Southern Europe. We present a new pollen record from a diatomite deposit at Rignano Flaminio, attributed to MIS 13 based on two major eruptive events from Monti Sabatini: the Grottarossa Pyroclastic Sequence (513 ± 3 ka) and the Fall A unit (499 ± 3 ka).

This paper compares changes in vegetation structure and composition (using synthetic fossil pollen data) with proxy data for population levels (including settlements and radiocarbon dates) over the course of the last 10 millennia in Tyrrhenian central Italy. These data show generalised patterns of clearance of woodland in response both to early agriculturalists and urbanism, as well as the specific adoption of tree crops and variations in stock grazing.

Climatic and environmental changes of the Middle Pleistocene in Europe provide the context for an important phase in the evolution and dispersal of early hominins. Pollen records from terrestrial and marine sediment sequences reveal patterns not usually visible in palaeoenvironmental reconstructions from archaeological sites alone and show that hominin evolution took place against a background of marked environmental change as forests expanded and contracted in concert with global and regional climatic shifts.

Vegetation patterns during the 1st millennium AD in the central Mediterranean, exhibit a great variability, due to the richness of these habitats and the continuous shaping of the environment by human societies. Variations in land use, witnessed in the pollen record, reflect the role that local veg- etation and environmental conditions played in the choices made by local societies.