The reconstruction of the natural and cultural landscape of the Cimone mountain (Northern Apennines, Italy) since the Neolithic from a pedoanthracological approach

Mont Cimone is the highest mountain of the Northern Apennines mountain system, feature that allowed him to be in the past until today an important place of cultural identity for indigenous populations. Mont Cimone is located in the "Parco regionale dell'Alto Appennino Modenese" and is an important spot of biodiversity that is protected in the Natura 2000 network. This territory has a rich and diversified floral heritage due to his geographical position between two great phytogeographic regions: Euro-Siberian and Mediterranean region. In the north-western slope of Mt. Cimone, the summital part between 1600m and 2100m a.s.l. is characterized by the presence of heathland dominated by Vaccinium myrtillus and Vaccinium gaultherioides and above 1600 m asl. there is a coppice beech forest. At the scale of the northern Apennines, the palaeoecological records (pollen, wood, organic matter, sedimentary) obtained from peat bogs located in the Apennines Ligure (from 800 to 1500 m a.s.l.) (Branch, 2004; Cruise, 1990a, 1990b; Cruise et al., 2009) and Tosco-Emiliano, (from 700 to 1800 m a.s.l.) (Bertolani Marchetti et al., 1994; Bertoldi et al., 2007; Lowe et al., 1994a, 1994b; Watson, 1996) have reconstructed the history of the vegetal landscape linked to climatic changes since the Tardiglacial. In Italy, few studies concerning the relationship between societies and environment are developed in mountain systems. The archaeological data concern essentially the plain where the archaeological remains are very frequent. The first survey on the Mont Cimone, has revealed the numerous archaeological remains like charcoal platforms located within the beech coppice and pastoral huts situated at the upper part between 1700m a.s.l. and 2000 m a.s.l. This fieldwork demonstrates that the Cimone landscape is an anthroposylvosystem transformed by societies since a long time. The aim of this PhD research is to develop an interdisciplinary approach based on geography, archaeology, history and palaeoecology methods. Convince by the role of societies in the construction of the landscape of the Cimone without discarding the role of the climate change, pedoanthracological transect was applied for the first time on this mountain in order to obtain at a more precise spatial scale, the reconstruction of the ligneous palaeolandscape and the history of fire events since a long time. In this context nine soil profiles were sampled at the north-west slope of Mt. Cimone across an altitudinal transect from 1650 m a.s.l. to 2078 m a.s.l. 8 pits are located in the current grassland and one pit is situated at the limit of the actual limit of the beech forest at around 1650 m a.s.l. The presence of charcoals in all the pits suggest the importance of fire events in the history of the Cimone landscape's. The charcoal assemblages show a strong dominance of Ericaceae (1077 - 1153 cal AD) at higher altitudes (above 1700m a.s.l.) as occurs in the present. The occurrence of forest species charcoals as Fagus and Abies in the current grassland between 1650 m and 1800 m a.s.l., shows that in the past these trees were well above the present treeline. The radiocarbon dating will provide useful data for the interpretation of temporal vegetational dynamics at the scale of the slope. These new information will be useful for a multiproxy interpretation to refine the knowledge of the vegetation and fire history of this area