Proposal of a Nomenclature for Hydrogeological Instability Risks and Case Studies of Conservative Soil Tillage for Environmental Protection

In order to implement environmental protection, within the Soil Cadastre, previously proposed as a multipurpose inventory that aims to promote sustainable soil uses, the hydrogeological instability caused by human activities is the focus of this work. These activities can be aimed at sustainable agricultural soil use or the building of roads to allow the access to the fields. The soil’s hydrogeological instability causes the unsustainable use and management of a cadastral parcel. Therefore, the aim of this work is to propose a nomenclature for hydrogeological instability risks, as well as the best practices of conservative soil tillage in case studies, in order to reduce environmental impact. According to the proposed Soil Cadastre, the missing environmental sustainability of a parcel and the reason for this must be communicated to the field owner or manager. In a hilly area of inland Western Sicily, four main risk types of hydrogeological instability were identified: hydrogeological instability (caused only by natural factors); hydraulic-pedological farming instability (crop not suitable for the field for missing or insufficient soil drainage and landslides); hydraulic-infrastructural instability (built up infrastructures unsuitable for the site); hydraulic-infrastructural-pedological-management instability (field improvements changing the downflow line and crop operations not suitable for the soil and climate parameters). The farm owner or manager must be informed about the risk type affecting their fields in order to perform the best practices (i.e., conservative soil tillage), for implementing or restoring a sustainable soil use or management in each cadastral parcel.

Geo-environmental changes and historical events in the area of the Greek archaeological site of Selinunte (Western Sicily, Italy)

Neste estudo no sítio arqueológico grego de Selinônte foram realizados levantamentos geomorfológicos e geoarqueológicos detalhados com o intuito de reconstruir a evolução da paisagem que ocorreu antes e durante a antropização do sítio e para verificar as possíveis correlações entre mudanças geoambientais e eventos humanos que caracterizou quase quatro séculos da história da cidade. Utilizando uma abordagem multidisciplinar e diferentes técnicas de levantamento, este estudo testemunhou o papel desempenhado pelo clima, configuração geomorfológica e georrecursos no condicionamento do desenvolvimento da cidade e a estreita relação por vezes observada entre os acontecimentos históricos e os processos naturais. Isso incluiu a polêmica e nunca descoberta obra hidráulica de Empédocles, que em 444 a.C., conforme as fontes textuais, resolveu um problema de saúde pública ligado à presença de áreas pantanosas.

Geomorphology and Prehistoric Settlements on a Volcanic Island: the Case of Ustica (Palermo, Italy)

This study represents the first attempt to combine the geomorphological characteristics of the island of Ustica with the human settlements that have been established during prehistory, with the purpose of reconstructing the interactions between communities and the natural environment from the Neolithic to the Middle Bronze Age (6th - 1st millennia B.C.). Ustica is a small island in the Southern Tyrrhenian Sea, visible but far (~55 km) from the northern coast of western Sicily. Its rugged volcanic nature, remodeled and enriched by the sea, offered to the first colonizers a wide repertoire of opportunities and challenges. This island can be treated as an ideal “laboratory” to understand how settlers, taking their first steps towards the foundation of organized communities, were able to seize opportunities or succumb to obstacles. The review of archaeological research until now carried out in Ustica, integrated with geomorphological data and other biogeographical indicators, offers a picture of the prehistory of Ustica in which human presence is continuous and distributed in various sites of the island characterized by different physiographic characteristics. There are phases dominated by the choice of naturally protected sites and phases in which settlements expands on open land, suitable for agricultural use. Where the archaeological evidence is scarce, the geomorphological peculiarities allow us to decipher the vocations and characters of a human settlement. The study leads to an open question: in the Middle Bronze Age, after about five thousand years of uninterrupted habitation of Ustica, which factors, geological, social, or other, induced the early communities to abandon the island, without returning there for about eight centuries, until the Hellenistic-Roman age?

Materials and Tools across Volcanoes: Exploitation of Georesources in Piano dei Cardoni (Ustica, Italy) during Prehistory

The paper aims at merging the first results from the analyses of the georesources exploited in the site of Piano dei Cardoni (Ustica island, Italy) during the Neolithic phases of its occupation (Middle-Late Neolithic, 4.7-4.2 ka cal BC). Grinding tools consist of a very varied typology of local volcanic rocks, easy to collect and available very close to the investigated site. A selection of shapes and lithology is applied to reach the best performance of the tools. The elevated number of grinders, pestles, mortars testify to an intense activity of food/plant processing in the site. The absence of chert or obsidian resources on the island pushed the human communities to import such raw materials from the Aeolian islands and probably from the north-western area of Palermo. Pumice is collected on the same island, probably due to the local availability and its good quality. Similarly, local clay resources are used for the manufacture of ceramics, mostly burnished and incised wares. Ustica was therefore almost autonomous for the exploitation of resources, with volcanic rocks readily available in abundance and with the most significant exception being chert and obsidian. This last one probably imported and worked on the island and then moved towards North-Western Sicily.

The indigenous settlement of Monte Iato (western Sicily): an ethnoarchaeometric approach for outlining local Archaic ceramic productions

An ethnoarchaeometric approach has been followed to identify the textural and compositional characteristics of the ceramic pastes produced in ancient Iaitas/Ietas, an indigenous site located in western Sicily on Monte Iato, a few tens of kilometres from Palermo. This approach was primarily motivated by the lack of discovered Archaic kilns or production sites/workshops and the inability to identify reference groups. Raw clays were sampled in the territory of San Cipirello and San Giuseppe Iato (today’s municipalities both sited on the northern slopes of Monte Iato), together with representative historic tiles and bricks locally produced until fairly recently. Grain-size analysis and experimental firings were performed on the clay samples. A significant number of archaeological ceramic samples (incised and painted indigenous pottery dating back to the seventh–fifth centuries BCE) from stratigraphic excavations on Monte Iato, and hypothesized as local productions on a stylistic-morphological basis, was carefully selected for archaeometric analysis. This set of samples (90 in total, comprising raw clays, historic tiles/bricks and archaeological ceramics) underwent a combined chemical and mineralogical-petrographic analysis to identify any possible compositional matching. This approach enabled the identification of minero-petrographic and chemical markers pertinent to the indigenous Archaic pottery produced at Monte Iato, although no evidence of coeval ceramic kilns has been found so far. Local raw clay sources have been documented and some significant points of the chaîne opératoire adopted in antiquity have been noted (clay mixing and tempering practices). Attesting Monte Iato as a centre of ceramic production and defining both the microscopic fabric and the average composition of local pastes open up new perspectives in the complex issue concerning the production and regional circulation of incised and painted indigenous ceramics in Archaic Sicily.