Charcoal Studies as Means to Record Wood Fire Catastrophes and Abrupt Changes in Vegetation: A Balance Between Nature and Human Activity
by
Lanfredo Castelletti
Musei Civici di Como
Coauthors: Sila Motella, Giovanni Procacci, Laboratorio di Archeobiologia dei Musei Civici di Como

Charcoal analysis (Anthracology) and other related studies such as pollen, micro-charcoal, phytoliths etc., are a valid way to study the dynamics of the vegetal cover both under man pressure and climatic changes. Forest fires, excessive grazing and systematic and intensive woodland are some of the causes of the rapid and dramatic palaeoecological transformations that took place during the last 10.000 years.

Repeated burning events change the vegetation and the soil in a irreversible shape. The residual charcoals contribute to a better knowledge of the evolution of the woody flora with considerable accuracy, particularly at high altitude. In the plain soils, e.g. in the Po plain, crop activities often destroy the charcoals derived from wood fires and we have only information from archaeological charcoal, especially if derived from funeral fires. In Italy, soil anthracology, or pedoanhtracology is at the early stages so the only evidence available to reconstruct the Late Glacial and Early Holocene vegetation comes from charcoal from Mesolithic hearts.

It is only from the 3rd millennium BC that charcoal from other contexts different from hearts are available in the Central Alps, as in Cavargna Valley, between Como and Lugano See.

Date received: July 25, 2005

Copyright © 2005 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # caqy-64.