Doline Fills - Case Study of the Faverghera Plateau (Venetian Pre-Alps, Italy)

The sedimentary fills of two dolines in the Faverghera plateau in the Venetian Pre-Alps, south of Belluno, have been investigated. This small plateau is a sub-horizontal surface about 0.5 km2 wide, located on the northeastern slope of Mt. Faverghera (1640 m a.s.l.) hosting nearly 40 karst dolines partially filled by periglacial slope deposits. Topographic survey, electric resistivity tomography (ERT), soil and pollen analyses have been carried on. The structure of the dolines and the characters of the filling deposits indicate that the evolution of these forms has been controlled by the alternation of different climatic and environmental conditions during the Pleistocene. The results indicate that the dolines are “filters” for the sediments, more than good traps, archiving only some of the climatic and environmental changes

The Botanical Record of Archaeobotany Italian Network - BRAIN: a cooperative network, database and website

Con autorización de la revista para autores CSIC[EN] The BRAIN (Botanical Records of Archaeobotany Italian Network) database and network was developed by the cooperation of archaeobotanists working on Italian archaeological sites. Examples of recent research including pollen or other plant remains in analytical and synthetic papers are reported as an exemplar reference list. This paper retraces the main steps of the creation of BRAIN, from the scientific need for the first research cooperation to the website which has a free online access since 2015.Peer reviewe

Tools for Non-Pollen Palynomorphs (NPPs) analysis: A list of Quaternary NPP types and reference literature in English language (1972\u20132011)

A systematic study of Non-Pollen Palynomorphs (NPPs) from Quaternary sediments was begun in 1968 in the Hugo de Vries-Laboratory (Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics \u2014 IBED) at the University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands). Since the publication of the famous paper by Bas van Geel (1972), more than 1300 NPPs have been described and many of them have been identified as the remains of diaspores, cyanobacteria, algae, rhizopods, fungi, invertebrates, and chormophytes. In order to assess the current state of the art in the description of NPP types, in this paper I reviewed the \u201cclassical NPP literature\u201d and the most recent literature as of November 2011, and I present a list of the described NPP types, as long as published in the English language. Full list of the NPP types and the related literature are available online as supplementary materials (.xls file) in this article's online version. The NPP type list is a new tool for NPP analysts and aims to widen the NPP research community, increase the number of identified NPP, and reduce the inconsistencies in naming the same microfossils

Tracce di attività orticole nel sito neolitico di Barbiano (Bolzano, Nord-Italia): uno studio palinologico

An archaeological research (April 2004- September 2005) in the Neolithic site of Barbiano - Caserma Pompieri (Bolzano - Northern Italy) documents several types of human activities connected to hunting and agriculture. Aiming at reconstructing the Neolithic palaeoenvironment, pollen analysis was conducted on samples collected in the site from an ancient soil surface (US 112). The US 112 is dated between the Ancient and the Middle Neolithic on the basis of archaeological findings (ceramics and lithic findings). Unfortunately the physical and chemical characteristics of the sediments prevented fossil pollen from good preservation. Pollen assemblages are characterized by dominance of the grassy over the arboreal element in all the samples, suggesting the presence of deforested areas near the site. An interesting result is the abundance in a sample of two pollen types, Allium type and Sinapis type, that could be caused by horticultural activities. Non pollen palynomorphs include spores of coprophilous fungi and others indicators of human presence. The archaeological and pollen analyses suggest that deforestation of the environment near the Neolithic site of Barbiano could be due to agriculture and continuous grazing

Are the plant collections held at the University of Padua still useful? A project to \u201cput the collections to work for conservation\u201d

The plant collections at the University of Padua include several herbaria of phanerogams, cryptogams, lichens, fungi, galls, some collections of seeds, wood samples, diatoms and macroalgae, several wax models and didactic boards. They consist of several thousands of specimens which were collected mainly from the end of the 18th century to the first half of the 20th century by the scholars of the Hortus Patavinus (e.g. A. Forti, R. de Visiani, P.A. Saccardo) and later by the researchers of the Botany Institute of the University. Lists of collections have been produced in 1895, in 1947 and recently in 1995 by different authors, but the accessibility is quite problematic and there is no complete updated catalogue. The collections are now held outside the research structure and are used mainly for didactic purposes. This way they risk losing their fundamental role in modern plant researches, like systematics, biodiversity and molecular genetics. We think that a better accessibility to the collections could save our precious academic heritage. The first step we are taking is the production of an electronic database of both the collections themselves and the specimens of the most important of them. We aim at increased collaboration with research institutes