Paola Torri

• PhD
• Laboratory Technician at University of Modena and Reggio Emilia

Nowadays, wild grapevine populations are quite limited and sporadic mainly due to habitat destruction, land-use change, and the spread of pathogens that have reduced their distribution range. Palaeoecological, archaeobotanical, and genetic studies indicate that modern cultivars of Vitis vinifera are the results of the domestication of the dioecious...

This paper presents palynological data obtained from a trench excavated at the Neolithic pile-dwelling archaeological site of Palù di Livenza (northeastern Italy). The site is in a wetland located in a tectonic basin at the foot of the Cansiglio plateau, crossed by the Livenza river. Environmental conditions have made this wetland a suitable area f...

This paper proposes new anthropogenic pollen indicators for the Balearic Islands and attempts to assess gradients of human impact on vegetation in Mediterranean islands. A combination of modern pollen analogue studies, complemented by phytosociological descriptions and ordination techniques using quantitative and presence/absence data was used. Red...

This paper presents the study of modern pollen analogs from the Balearic Islands. While similar studies have been largely applied to mainland areas, research focused on modern vegetation dynamics on Mediterranean islands remains very rare. In this research, we combine vegetation surveys, pollen analysis and multivariate statistics to understand lan...

Significance Forest conservation and restoration are important means to counter threats caused by habitat fragmentation and global change. Diverse and resilient forests can only be maintained if we understand their sensitivity to past climate change. The sedimentary record of the oldest extant lake in Europe, Lake Ohrid (North Macedonia, Albania),...

The 15th century cross-vaults of the medieval Modena Cathedral (UNESCO site) consist of intricate patches of different masonry portions bound by three types of lime mortars and at least two types of gypsum mortars. Such anomalous structure suggests multiple repair works over time after damaging earthquakes. The absolute dating of lime mortars (¹⁴C)...

The recovery of inaperturate pollen from functionally female flowers in archaeological layers opens the question of a possible pollen-based discrimination between wild and domesticated Vitis vinifera in prehistoric times. Pollen analysis applied to archaeology has not routinely considered the existence of pollen dimorphism in Vitis, a well-known tr...

Mediterranean climates are characterized by strong seasonal contrasts between dry summers and wet winters. Changes in winter rainfall are critical for regional socioeconomic development, but are difficult to simulate accurately¹ and reconstruct on Quaternary timescales. This is partly because regional hydroclimate records that cover multiple glacia...

The high-resolution Adriatic RF93-30 core shows changes in its microcharcoal record, which correlate to terrestrial fires from the last 7000 years. Pollen and microcharcoals were transported by wind and fluvial transport from the sedimentary basin, including the Po River and other rivers flowing into the sea off the Italian east coast. Charcoal par...

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 agr...

This backstory article deals with the SUCCESSO-TERRA Project (2017–2020), an interdisciplinary research program aiming at reconstructing the land-use transformations that occurred during the development of the Terramare culture in the southern-central Po Plain of Northern Italy. Topics include climate-environment changes, human impact and exploitat...

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 m...

In this paper, we focus on the most critical but low-studied Late Roman phase (3rd-6th century AD) of Mutina, an important Roman colony situated in Northern Italy. During this period, partly including the Late Antique, the seasonal variability with inconstant precipitation might have been responsible for devastating flood events. In the Po Plain, l...

This backstory article deals with the SUCCESSO-TERRA Project (2017–2020), an interdisciplinary research program aiming at reconstructing the land-use transformations that occurred during the development of the Terramare culture in the southern-central Po Plain of Northern Italy. Topics include climate-environment changes, human impact and exploitat...

Palynological research carried out on two renowned archaeological sites located in central Sicily allows the reconstruction of agrarian landscapes in Late Antiquity. The palynological investigations may improve the resolution of vegetational-environmental events recorded from extra-local palynological sequences by giving information on local plant...

Background. In 2015, a paper on the archaeobotany as a key tool ‘for the understanding of the bio-cultural diversity of the Italian landscape’ gave rise to a new initiative, the realization of the first cooperative network of archaeobotanists and palynologists working on archaeological sites located in Italy. The Botanical Record of Archaeobotany I...

This study reviews and synthesises existing information generated within the SCOPSCO (Scientific Collaboration on Past Speciation Conditions in Lake Ohrid) deep drilling project. The four main aims of the project are to infer (i) the age and origin of Lake Ohrid (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia/Republic of Albania), (ii) its regional seismote...

Aerobiological data have especially demonstrated that there is correlation between climate warming and the pollination season of plants. This paper focuses on airborne pollen monitoring of Betulaceae and Poaceae, two of the main plant groups with anemophilous pollen and allergenic proprieties in Northern Italy. The aim is to investigate plant respo...

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....

Archaeobotanical analyses (mainly on seeds and fruits - over 1000 l of sieved material with unpublished data) from three urban sites (2nd cent. BC - 2nd cent. AD) provided interesting ethnobotanical information about a Roman colony, . Mutina (Emilia-Romagna, Northern Italy), founded in 183 BC.In this paper, comparisons are made between productive a...

Lake Ohrid (Balkan peninsula) is the oldest European extant lake and one of the deepest and largest. Such a unique, terrestrial natural archive is especially relevant for both paleoenvironmental and paleoclimatic reconstructions but also for genetic studies. In the frame of the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP), a deep dr...

Geomorphologic, stratigraphic, faunistic, palynological and 14C analyses were carried out in the area of the mouth of the Garigliano River characterized by two strand plains that are referred to the Eutyrrhenian and the Holocene, rimming two depressed zones separated by the Garigliano River channel. This study depicts the palaeoenvironmental evolut...

Lake Ohrid is located at the border between FYROM (Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia) and Albania and formed during the latest phases of Alpine orogenesis. It is the deepest, the largest and the oldest tectonic lake in Europe. To better understand the paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental evolution of Lake Ohrid, deep drilling was carried out...

Modern biodiversity is the result of the long-term shaping that humans and climate made on vegetation, soils and landforms. This is especially evident in the Mediterranean area, crowd of civilizations since ancient times. Most of the biological archives, including pollen, upon which past environmental reconstructions are based, are known to respon...

In this corrigendum we report an updated pollen record from the Lake Ohrid DEEP site spanning the past 500 ka whereby we have reprocessed and re-analyzed 104 samples affected by chemical procedure problems that occurred in one palynological laboratory. Firstly, these samples were affected by the use of wrong containers, causing inadequate settling...

Lake Ohrid is located at the border between FYROM and Albania and formed during the latest phases of Alpine orogenesis. It is the deepest, the largest and the oldest tectonic lake in Europe. To better understand the paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental evolution of Lake Ohrid a deep drilling was carried out in 2013 within the framework of the Scien...

The sedimentary infilling of the moat surrounding the Villaggio Piccolo of the Terramara Santa Rosa di Poviglio was analysed in order to obtain palaeoenvironmental inferences from sediments and pollen assemblage. The high-resolution stratigraphic sequence preserves evidence of the environmental changes that occurred in the Po Plain, in Northern Ita...

 The development of urban landscapes is investigated by integrated archaeobotany  On-site / off-site records allow the reconstruction of an urban environment of the past  A Roman town of the Po Plain showed high plant biodiversity  Habitat fragmentation was already present in the Roman times  Semi-natural environments at the edges of the to...

Plant remains - including pollen, non-pollen palynomorphs, seeds and fruits, woods and charcoals - are among the most important biological archives upon which past environmental reconstructions are based. From one hand, plants are known to respond, in fact, to both climate change and human impact. From the other hand, humans collected plants that w...

Archaeobotanical analyses have been carried out on the site “Novi Ark” in the city of Modena. The excavation has also brought to light a necropolis, rural buildings, tanks and production facilities. Pollen, NPPs, seeds/fruits were collected from archaeological layers dated between the 5th-4th BC and 2nd AD. Below are reported the main features of s...

The Garigliano plain between Lazio and Campania in Italia has been characterized until recently by an alternation of swamps or marshlands and well drained areas due to the presence of old beach ridges. The settlement system and the economy of the region were influenced by these geomorphological and hydrological conditions. The Garigliano plain, com...

Pollen data from twenty-six archaeological sites are reviewed to investigate the development of human-induced environments through the presence of selected Anthropogenic Pollen indicators (APi). the sites are located in six italian regions - veneto, emilia romagna, tuscany, Basilicata, calabria, and sicily - and in the republic of san Marino. their...

The Mediterranean basin has always featured, and still has, extremely rich and intermingled environmental and cultural biodiversity. The mosaic of habitats distributed around the Mediterranean basin was primarily transformed by climatic changes occurring at a global scale. In the meantime, the environment has been continuously exploited and the lan...

the garigliano Plain (between latium and campania) is characterized by the presence of wetlands behind the most recent beach ridge. although modern cartography displays small lakes and the greek and latin authors describe a marshy environment close to the river mouth, it is not easy to define the nature of these wetlands and the relationship betwee...

the vegetation of the Po Plain has long been modified by natural and human factors. the present plant landscape is almost entirely anthropogenic. Many hydro-hygrophilous species, quite common until a few decades ago, are now very rare and in danger of extinction, so conservation programmes are necessary for their protection and maintenance. it is k...

Woody plant performance in a changing global environment has always been at the centre of palaeoenvironmental and long-term climate reconstructions carried out by means of pollen analysis. In Mediterranean regions, Taxus constitutes the highest percentage in past pollen diagrams from cold or cool periods, and therefore it is generally considered a...

This research paper is cited in the Advances in Environment Research and Application: 2013 Edition (p. 406-407). The paper shows an original comparison between a marine record (Adraitic Sea core RF93-30) and an archaeological layer (Terramara di Montale-Middle Bronze age in Italy) Integration of pollen data from both marine and terrestrial cores c...

SYnthesis of archaeo - bio - metric analyses

Abstract -Cichorioideae with fenestrate pollen are among the most important markers of pasturelands. The pollen type mainly includes members of the Cichorieae tribe, and this is the actual tribe identified in pollen spectra from the Italian peninsula. The paper presents a brief review of pollen presence of Cichorieae in archaeological sites of sout...

This paper presents the study of parasite remains recovered in pollen samples collected from archaeological layers. Laboratory treatment enabled us to ob- tain very high concentrations of both pollen and parasite eggs from the same samples. The case study of the site of Piazza Garibaldi in Parma, a town in the Po plain, is reported. The site was a...

Archaeobotanical analyses were carried out on pits and latrine, dated to the 10th – 11th centuries AD, from the site of Piazza Garibaldi. According to archaeological data, the site was a market square in Mediaeval times. Data from pollen and seeds/fruits were useful for both palaeoenvironmental and palaeoethnobotanical reconstruction, and together...

Fin dai tempi preistorici l'attività umana ha introdotto nel paesaggio vegetale modifiche che sono ben documentate a livello microscopico dal polline che le diverse comunità vegetali hanno prodotto nel tempo. Negli Indicatori Antropogenici 1 rientra il polline prodotto da specie colti-vate (ad es. olivo o cereali), da piante nitrofile o di luoghi c...

Since 2003, an extensive hydrogeological investigation has been carried out on Monte Baldo, in order to make a census of springs occurring along the west side of the mountain and to evaluate the quality of their water. The investigation included morphological and hydrogeological observations concerning the Tanella cave and interdisciplinary investi...

Archeological and paleo-environmental researches carried on the Grotta Grande site illustrate the importance of a multidisciplinary approach among archeologists, palynologists and paleontologists. The archaeology, fauna, pollen and micro-charcoal recovered in two short sedimentary successions (trenches A, F) located close to the entrance of the cav...

104 0 Congresso Nazionale della Società Botanica Italiana onlus Le scienze botaniche nella cultura e sviluppo economico del territorio , Riassunti delle comunicazioni e dei poster Campobasso, 16-19 settembre 2009

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