Partner coordinator at DST UniPisa: Marta Pappalardo (Università di Pisa)
Partners: Università degli studi di Milano, Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra “A. Desio”, Responsabile dell’Unità Operativa Andrea Zerboni
Duration: June 1st, 201 to November 30th 2023 (2 years and 5 months)
Budget (€): 1.020.692,80
ERC field: PE10
ERC subfields: PE10_3 Climatology and Climate change
Keywords: Human population, sea-level change, rocky shores ecology, Prehistory, Ligurian Sea
Scope: This project aims at reconstructing the environmental scenarios connected with interglacial sea-levels of the last 400ky in order to investigate human response in their living space driven by coastal landscape modifications and climatic/environmental change. For planning a future sustainable development worldwide, it is essential to understand the impacts of major sea-level modifications on our ancestors and how these early human communities reacted to these environmental changes. In particular, few data are presently available on the resilience or, rather, adaptation as a survival strategy, depending on trend, pattern, speed and magnitude of coastline shifts induced by sea-level fluctuations. Unravelling which was the attitude of humans towards changing coastal environments, can be particularly interesting during the interglacial periods, that are similar to present in terms of sea level and climatic-environmental conditions.
Cultural heritage represents a major source of information in order to investigate the attitude of humans towards coastal modifications and more in general to climatic and environmental changes occurred in the past. An innovative, interdisciplinary approach will be developed to exploit the cultural heritage as a proxy to define the impacts of major climatic changes on the human population. Cultural heritage, in fact, can be used not only as a witness of past spiritual and aesthetic attitudes of mankind, but also as a unique means to investigate the intimate relationship between humanity and the environment.
Geographically the research will be developed in the NW Mediterranean Sea (Ligurian Sea), and focussed on a target area for addressing this issue, rich of Prehistorical archaeological sites related to evidence of former sea-level. The most relevant of them is the Balzi Rossi archaeological site, at the border between Italy and France, recognized as one of the most important coastal archaeological sites of NW Mediterranean Sea.
Activities will include: i) a general review of previous work on the study site; ii) the assessment of sea-level markers elevations through dedicated topographic survey and their interpretation in terms of sea-level markers, including validation of sea-level data against geophysical models; iii) a stratigraphic study and dating of marine faunas, together with new analyses enabling the interpretation of their palaeoecologic and palaeoclimatic significance; iv) excavations in target sequences and new archaeological surveys along the emerged and submerged part of the cliff.
The results will be disseminated adopting a policy of open data/access following previous experiences of archaeological and palaeoenvironmental repositories of open data.
Other UniPisa participants: Elisabetta Starnini (Dipartimento di Civiltà e Forme del Sapere), Luca Ragaini and Matteo Vacchi (Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra)