The human selection of food plants cannot always have been aimed exclusively at isolating the tra... more The human selection of food plants cannot always have been aimed exclusively at isolating the traits typical of domesticated species today. Each phase of global change must have obliged plants and humans to cope with and develop innovative adaptive strategies. Hundreds of thousands of wild cereal seeds from the Holocene 'green Sahara' tell a story of cultural trajectories and environmental instability revealing that a complex suite of weediness traits were preferred by both hunter-gatherers and pastoralists. The archaeobotanical record of the Takarkori rockshelter in southwest Libya covering four millennia of human occupation in the central Sahara gives us a unique insight into long-term plant manipulation and cultivation without domestication. The success of a number of millets was rooted in their invasive-opportunistic behaviour, rewarded during their coexistence with people in Africa. These wild plants were selected for features that were precious in the past but pernicio...
This is a very interesting and well written paper pointing to a key event that has many intriguin... more This is a very interesting and well written paper pointing to a key event that has many intriguing ambiguities in the Mediterranean, made of local contexts with plant/niche diversity and repeated impressive development of (western) civilizations. The synthesis is based on palynological data obtained from 36 well-dated off-site records depicting slight to strong changes in Arboreal Pollen percentages. The AP curves are taken as exemplar cases showing tree/shrub reactions to climate and human-driven forces. The distinction of four main groups/regions matching a good correspondence between the AP/forest response and the latitude can be shared as useful to start with a sort
The Long-Term perspective on the human impact on the landscape for Environmental Change (LoTEC) i... more The Long-Term perspective on the human impact on the landscape for Environmental Change (LoTEC) is becoming one of the main topics of paramount interest in biological and earth sciences. The understanding of LoTEC is based on the knowledge of environments at subsequent steps and degree of human impact. Multidisciplinary biogeo-archaeological investigations on the dynamics that govern the human-climate ecosystem are crucial to allow us to envisage possible future scenarios of biosphere responses to global warming and biodiversity loss (Mercuri and Florenzano 2019). Palynology is among the most informative tools to study high-resolution sequences formed under natural and anthropogenic (cultural) forces, and LoTEC can be studied for example by characterizing human action on tree crops and synanthropic wild plants that grew preferably in rural and urban environments. A number of studies discuss the relationships between the rise and fall of past cultures, connecting the environmental ch...
This paper compares changes in vegetation structure and composition (using synthetic fossil polle... more 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. The results provide a comprehensive understanding of the development of the anthropogenised landscape of one of the most important early centres of European civilisation, showing regional trends as well as local variations.
This is not the first time the Earth has to experience dramatic environmental and climate changes... more This is not the first time the Earth has to experience dramatic environmental and climate changes but this seems to be the first time that a living species—humanity—is able to understand that great changes are taking place rapidly and that probably natural and anthropogenic forces are involved in the process that is under way [...]
Abstract Pollen morphology of 14 cultivars of Olea europaea subsp. europaea var. europaea was ana... more Abstract Pollen morphology of 14 cultivars of Olea europaea subsp. europaea var. europaea was analysed in order to discriminate main pollen types. The cultivars were selected from the most spread and early flowering crops grown in Italy. Morphometric parameters were observed on acetolysed pollen by means of light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy. Polar axis (P), equatorial diameter (E), P/E ratio, maximum distance between colpi in mesocolpium, distance between the apices of two colpi, exine thickness, maximum length of lumina in mesocolpium and in apocolpium, and exine reticulum thickness in mesocolpium have been measured. According to P and E, the 14 olive cultivars of this study can be divided into the three groups of small (P: 21.75 µm, E: 22.55 µm; ‘Manna’ and ‘Tonda di Cagliari’), large (P: 25.1 µm, E: 26.1 µm; ‘Pescarese’ and ‘Rotondella di Sanza’) and medium size (P: 23.49 µm, E: 24.54 µm, ‘Carolea’, ‘Grossa di Cassano’, ‘Giarraffa’, ‘Nocellara messinese’, ‘Nocellara del Belice’, ‘Santagatese’, ‘Intosso’, ‘Maiatica di Ferrandina’, ‘Nostrale di Fiano Romano’, ‘Santa Caterina’). Maximum length of lumina and exine thickness are useful parameters for further distinction of olive pollen groups, since these parameters are able to provide a specific pollen profile for each cultivar.
The human selection of food plants cannot always have been aimed exclusively at isolating the tra... more The human selection of food plants cannot always have been aimed exclusively at isolating the traits typical of domesticated species today. Each phase of global change must have obliged plants and humans to cope with and develop innovative adaptive strategies. Hundreds of thousands of wild cereal seeds from the Holocene 'green Sahara' tell a story of cultural trajectories and environmental instability revealing that a complex suite of weediness traits were preferred by both hunter-gatherers and pastoralists. The archaeobotanical record of the Takarkori rockshelter in southwest Libya covering four millennia of human occupation in the central Sahara gives us a unique insight into long-term plant manipulation and cultivation without domestication. The success of a number of millets was rooted in their invasive-opportunistic behaviour, rewarded during their coexistence with people in Africa. These wild plants were selected for features that were precious in the past but pernicio...
This is a very interesting and well written paper pointing to a key event that has many intriguin... more This is a very interesting and well written paper pointing to a key event that has many intriguing ambiguities in the Mediterranean, made of local contexts with plant/niche diversity and repeated impressive development of (western) civilizations. The synthesis is based on palynological data obtained from 36 well-dated off-site records depicting slight to strong changes in Arboreal Pollen percentages. The AP curves are taken as exemplar cases showing tree/shrub reactions to climate and human-driven forces. The distinction of four main groups/regions matching a good correspondence between the AP/forest response and the latitude can be shared as useful to start with a sort
The Long-Term perspective on the human impact on the landscape for Environmental Change (LoTEC) i... more The Long-Term perspective on the human impact on the landscape for Environmental Change (LoTEC) is becoming one of the main topics of paramount interest in biological and earth sciences. The understanding of LoTEC is based on the knowledge of environments at subsequent steps and degree of human impact. Multidisciplinary biogeo-archaeological investigations on the dynamics that govern the human-climate ecosystem are crucial to allow us to envisage possible future scenarios of biosphere responses to global warming and biodiversity loss (Mercuri and Florenzano 2019). Palynology is among the most informative tools to study high-resolution sequences formed under natural and anthropogenic (cultural) forces, and LoTEC can be studied for example by characterizing human action on tree crops and synanthropic wild plants that grew preferably in rural and urban environments. A number of studies discuss the relationships between the rise and fall of past cultures, connecting the environmental ch...
This paper compares changes in vegetation structure and composition (using synthetic fossil polle... more 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. The results provide a comprehensive understanding of the development of the anthropogenised landscape of one of the most important early centres of European civilisation, showing regional trends as well as local variations.
This is not the first time the Earth has to experience dramatic environmental and climate changes... more This is not the first time the Earth has to experience dramatic environmental and climate changes but this seems to be the first time that a living species—humanity—is able to understand that great changes are taking place rapidly and that probably natural and anthropogenic forces are involved in the process that is under way [...]
Abstract Pollen morphology of 14 cultivars of Olea europaea subsp. europaea var. europaea was ana... more Abstract Pollen morphology of 14 cultivars of Olea europaea subsp. europaea var. europaea was analysed in order to discriminate main pollen types. The cultivars were selected from the most spread and early flowering crops grown in Italy. Morphometric parameters were observed on acetolysed pollen by means of light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy. Polar axis (P), equatorial diameter (E), P/E ratio, maximum distance between colpi in mesocolpium, distance between the apices of two colpi, exine thickness, maximum length of lumina in mesocolpium and in apocolpium, and exine reticulum thickness in mesocolpium have been measured. According to P and E, the 14 olive cultivars of this study can be divided into the three groups of small (P: 21.75 µm, E: 22.55 µm; ‘Manna’ and ‘Tonda di Cagliari’), large (P: 25.1 µm, E: 26.1 µm; ‘Pescarese’ and ‘Rotondella di Sanza’) and medium size (P: 23.49 µm, E: 24.54 µm, ‘Carolea’, ‘Grossa di Cassano’, ‘Giarraffa’, ‘Nocellara messinese’, ‘Nocellara del Belice’, ‘Santagatese’, ‘Intosso’, ‘Maiatica di Ferrandina’, ‘Nostrale di Fiano Romano’, ‘Santa Caterina’). Maximum length of lumina and exine thickness are useful parameters for further distinction of olive pollen groups, since these parameters are able to provide a specific pollen profile for each cultivar.
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Papers by Anna Maria Mercuri