The memory of water: Archaeobotanical evidence of wetland plants from Modena (Emilia-Romagna, northern Italy) and palaeoecological remarks

Giovanna Bosi , Alessandra Benatti (1) , Rossella Rinaldi , Daniele Dallai , Claudio Santini , Michele Carbognani , Marcello Tomaselli , Marta Bandini Mazzanti

1 GEOLAB - Laboratoire de Géographie Physique et Environnementale

Modena, founded by the Romans (183 BC), has always been conditioned by water in all its urban history. In the city, numerous archaeobotanical investigations have been carried out in order to reconstruct the natural landscape and human– environment interactions over time. During these investigations, four archaeological sites (two Roman and two medieval) have revealed deposits with a marked character of palaeobiocoenosis, largely resulting from the natural environment surrounding the sites, due to natural “seed rain”. These deposits are characterized by widespread evidence of plants related to water, constituting a valuable archive to investigate habitats which currently have become very rare and threatened, if they have not completely disappeared. The present paper aims to reveal the peculiarities of the Roman/medieval archaeocarpological floristic lists (through a comparison with the flora over the last two centuries in the area of Modena) and highlight the possible causes explaining the presence or the demise of several taxa, considering also the palaeoecological reconstruction of the environment in which they have been found.

Mots clés: seeds/fruits; wetland; Roman/medieval/recent; Archaeobotany/ecology

Domaines: Sciences de l'environnement; Biodiversité et Ecologie; Sciences de l'Homme et Société; Archéologie et Préhistoire

Giovanna Bosi, Alessandra Benatti, Rossella Rinaldi, Daniele Dallai, Claudio Santini, et al.. The memory of water: Archaeobotanical evidence of wetland plants from Modena (Emilia-Romagna, northern Italy) and palaeoecological remarks. Plant Biosystems, 2015, pp.144-153. ⟨hal-01126716⟩