Paleo-Environment Reconstruction

A B S T R A C T The period corresponding to Marine Isotope Stages 9 (MIS 9) offers the opportunity to study orbital and sub-orbital scale climate variability under boundary conditions different from those of better studied intervals such as the Holocene and the Last Interglacial. Yet, it is poorly represented in independently-dated continental archives around the Mediterranean Region. Here, we present a speleothem stable isotope record (δ 18 O and δ13 C) from the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia (F.Y.R.O.M., southern Balkans), which consists of two periods of growth broadly covering the ca. 332 to 292 ka and the ca. 264 to 248 ka intervals (MIS 9e-b and late MIS 8). We interpret the speleothem δ 18 O as mostly related to regional hydrology, with variations that can be interpreted as due to changes in rainfall amount, with higher/lower values associated to drier/wetter condition. This interpretation is corroborated by a change in mineralogical composition between aragonite and calcite at ca. 328 ka, which marks increasing precipitation at the onset of MIS 9 and occurs within a trend of decreasing δ 18 O values. Also the comparison with the multiproxy climate record available from the nearby Lake Ohrid seems to support the proposed interpretation. The MIS 9e interglacial appears to be characterized by wettest conditions between ca. 326 and 321 ka, i.e. lasting ca. 5 kyr. Decreasing precipitation and enhanced millennial scale variability matches the glacial inception (MIS9 d to b), with drier events at ca. 319 ka (ca. 2 kyr long) and 310 ka (ca. 1 kyr long), and a major rainfall reduction between 306 and 298 ka. The latter is followed by a prominent wetter period between 298 and 295 ka, for which carbon data values suggest high infiltration rate. Rainfall decreases again after 295 ka, and remain low until the growth interruption at ca. 292 ka. Resumption of the growth and progressive soil development, expressed by the carbon isotope record, occurred during the late part of MIS 8. Despite the rather high temporal uncertainty (average 6 ka), the speleothem hydrological record complements the environmental information provided by the Lake Ohrid record and also fits well to the framework of regional and extra-regional variability, showing similarities with pollen records from southern and western Europe, both at orbital and at sub-orbital time scale.

"Tyre lies on the Phoenician coast, in present day southern Lebanon and has a
long history of human occupation, beginning in the Bronze Age. Between the 10th and 7th centuries BC Tyre was the capital
of the Phoenician thallasocracy and continued to prosper through the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods, as attest the city’s many impressive archaeological
remains. Originally an
island, Alexander the Great exploited Tyre’s proto-tombolo to link, by means of a causeway, the city to the continent in 332 BC.
Under the auspices of the AIST, UNESCO CPM and CEDRE, this paper presents current geoarchaeological work on the palaeoenvironments and spatial
organisation of Tyre’s northern harbour during Antiquity. Today an insignificant fishing harbour is all that remains of the ancient anchorage havens. Many scholars have long questioned whether such a small harbour would have been sufficient in antiquity."

The Colfiorito Plain is a Plio-Quaternary tectono-karstic intermontane basin of the Central Apennines, located at ~750 m a.s.l. A large excavation was recently made across the Fonte delle Mattinate (FDM) saddle, an important mountain pass along one of the main natu- ral way of the region connecting the Tyrrhenian and Adriatic side. Combined, litho-pedostatigraphic and archaeological analyses descri- be a detailed geoenviromental evolution and correlated human occupation history of this strategic area in the course of the last Bond cycle of the Oxygen Isotope Stage 3 (OIS3; ca. 38-29 GISP2 ka B.P.). The lowest part of the succession is related to a fluvial depositio- nal system, represented by an active channel and an adjacent floodplain which was in turn subjected to overbanking episodes and pedogenetic processes testified by an evolved paleosol (Vertisol) dated to 31.510±860-30.970±310-28.910±390-28.300±790 14C yr B.P. The paleosol is buried by a thick sequence of gravely silty sediments ascribable to debris-flow-dominated fan depositional system. Radiocarbon dates from the base and top of this unit place the this environmental shift between 25,930±325 B.P. and 24,150±120 B.P. The paleosol and the two silty levels at the base of the alluvial fan sediments yielded Early Upper Palaeolithic artefacts and associated features consistent with brief, but frequent episodes of human occupation. The available stratigraphic and radiocarbon data indeed indi- cate that human occupation at FDM area was probably systematic, and lasted the whole period of the soil formation up until the first alluvial episodes responsible for its burial. In terms of the radiocarbon chronology, this period spans at least the interval between 31,510±860, age of the oldest anthropogenic charcoals embedded in the paleosol, and 25,930±325, date of the uppermost documented archaeological layer of the sequence. The site being definitively abandoned after this latter date. Based on lithostratigraphic data and chronology the FDM paleosol has been correlated with a pedomarker well documented throughout Central Apennine. Furthermore, regional pollen information and tephrochronological data suggest that the formation of both FDM and Central Apennine paleosol(s) occurred during a mild and wet climatic phase corresponding to the firsts millennial of the last Bond cycle of the OIS3 (Greenland inter- stadial 8-7; ca. 38-34 GISP ka B.P. The subsequent co-occurrence of geoenvironmental change and human abandonment can be cor- related with the Heinrich event 3 (HE3; ca. 30-29 GISP2 ka B.P.), the last coldest episode of the above mentioned Bond cycle. Such site evidence for synchronous geoenvironmental and human responses to the HE3, suggests that during the OIS3 the environmental changes related to the HEs had a significant impact on Palaeolithic communities, probably limiting or modifying their mobility in the Central Apennine mountains.

SUMMARY – Paleo-environment and archaeological context: the case of Latera Caldera. In this paper are presented the results of the study of archaeological and paleo-environmental data of the Latera Caldera. The research is focused on the proposal for a reconstruction of the ancient landscape in which to enter the communities of the past. The Latera Caldera is a specific ecosystem, conditioned by the presence of water, especially during prehistoric and proto-historic times. The paleo-environmental reconstruction is mainly based on the results of the analysis of cores taken from the Lake Mezzano bed in 1995 and on systematic geoarchaeological survey of the caldera, carried out in the 1993-1994 years. These data were compared with the systematic review of all archaeological researches carried out in the area and with the revision of related materials. As regards the pile-dwelling settlement of Lake Mezzano, which is the most important site of the caldera, a specific research is in progress: a preview of the results, however, is presented in this paper. Regarding the Bronze Age the availability of information, more complete and comprehensive than the previous chronological phases, has allowed a detailed reconstruction. It seems important that the periods of greatest human impact on the environment coincide with arid events, despite there is a problem in identifying of the data: the human action, in fact, is absorbed by an environment dominated by well-developed forests and it is clearly detectable only in coincidence with climate crisis. The research highlighted an evident impact on the environment by the comunities settled inside the caldera during the end of the Early Bronze Age and the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age and then, later, with the Late Bronze Age in relation to arid events: this could may indicate that these communities were able to exploit the productive potential of an ecosystem as special as that of caldera only when the groundwater level lowered in a generalized way. This hypothesis invests in full the problems associated with the degree of know-how applied to various sectors of subsistence economy: as regards the agriculture, for example, the ability to cultivate soil become too heavy due to the rising of groundwater level.

In the understanding of the global faunal turnover during the Paleocene–Eocene transition, an important role has been attributed to the Asian continent, although the Asian fossil record for this period is still incomplete. Here we present a multidisciplinary study of the Subeng section (Inner Mongolia, P.R. China), integrating sedimentological, stratigraphical and diverse palaeontological data, in order to reconstruct the palaeoenvironment and to enhance the understanding of the late Paleocene communities that once thrived on the Mongolian Plateau. The Subeng section starts with the Maastrichtian Iren Dabasu Formation directly covered by the late Paleocene Nomogen Formation. This Nomogen Formation is composed of typical lacustrine deposits at the base, covered by fluvio-lacustrine deposits at the top. Both types of deposits provided rich ostracod and charophyte assemblages, closest to those of the Naran Member, Naran Bulak Formation of Mongolia. Palynomorphs from the lake sediments suggest a local flora at Subeng more wooded and closed than reported from elsewhere in this region. The fluvio-lacustrine deposits of the Nomogen Formation have yielded a vertebrate fauna especially rich in mammals. The mammal fauna from Subeng is close to that from Bayan Ulan and typical for the Gashatan Asian Land Mammal Age. The presence of reworked pedogenic carbonate nodules and mud aggregates suggests an at least seasonally dry regional climate. Combined sedimentological and palaeontological data suggest the late Paleocene Nomogen Formation at Subeng was an isolated woodland in a fluvio-lacustrine environment, representing a locally humid environment on the semi-arid Mongolian Plateau. The mammal fauna reflects these differences and shows a number of relatives to mammals from the more humid northeastern Chinese biotic province as well as some North American immigrants.

The main purpose of this work is to make a first evaluation of the potential of the carbonate lacustrine sediment of the Mer-cure Basin (Basilicata region), to preserve palaeoclimatic information during the Middle Pleistocene. For this purpose a multi-proxy analysis of the lacustrine sediments from a selected section of the basin was undertaken. The selected section contains several tephra layers, which constrains the timing of deposition to MIS 13. Stable isotopes (oxygen and carbon) and element content were tentatively interpreted as linked to climatic changes giving interesting results for this poorly studied interval.

In the understanding of the global faunal turnover during the Paleocene–Eocene transition, an important role has been attributed to the Asian continent, although the Asian fossil record for this period is still incomplete. Here we present a multidisciplinary study of the Subeng section (Inner Mongolia, P.R. China), integrating sedimentological, stratigraphical and diverse palaeontological data, in order to reconstruct the palaeoenvironment and to enhance the understanding of the late Paleocene communities that once thrived on the Mongolian Plateau. The Subeng section starts with the Maastrichtian Iren Dabasu Formation directly covered by the late Paleocene Nomogen Formation. This Nomogen Formation is composed of typical lacustrine deposits at the base, covered by fluvio-lacustrine deposits at the top. Both types of deposits provided rich ostracod and charophyte assemblages, closest to those of the Naran Member, Naran Bulak Formation of Mongolia. Palynomorphs from the lake sediments suggest a local flora at Subeng more wooded and closed than reported from elsewhere in this region. The fluvio-lacustrine deposits of the Nomogen Formation have yielded a vertebrate fauna especially rich in mammals. The mammal fauna from Subeng is close to that from Bayan Ulan and typical for the Gashatan Asian Land Mammal Age. The presence of reworked pedogenic carbonate nodules and mud aggregates suggests an at least seasonally dry regional climate. Combined sedimentological and palaeontological data suggest the late Paleocene Nomogen Formation at Subeng was an isolated woodland in a fluvio-lacustrine environment, representing a locally humid environment on the semi-arid Mongolian Plateau. The mammal fauna reflects these differences and shows a number of relatives to mammals from the more humid northeastern Chinese biotic province as well as some North American immigrants.