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Bronze Age subsistence in Sardinia, Italy: cultivated plants and wild resources

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Abstract

This paper presents new archaeobotanical data from six sites in Sardinia, Italy, dated to the Bronze Age (2000–1100 cal. bc). A total of 978 l of sediment has been sampled and 23,008 items retrieved. The study reveals the presence of cereals (Hordeum vulgare, H. vulgare var. nudum, Triticum monococcum and T. aestivum/durum), legumes (Lathyrus sativus/cicera, Lens culinaris, Pisum sativum and Vicia faba), and wild plants such as Ficus carica, Fragaria sp., Rubus sp., Prunus spinosa, Vitis vinifera, Myrtus communis, Juniperus oxycedrus and Pistacia lentiscus, providing substantial information on the agricultural practices of the first Nuragic communities during the Bronze Age in Sardinia.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank the Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici per le province di Cagliari e Oristano and the Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici per le province di Sassari e Nuoro, in particular Marco Edoardo Minoja, Alessandro Usai, Ignazio Sanna, Luisanna Usai, Nadia Canu and Valentina Leonelli. Special thanks are due to Gianluigi Bacchetta, director of CCB (Biodiversity Conservation Center) for his support for and his endorsement of the conservation of archaeological materials in the Sardinian Germplasm Bank (BG-SAR). We are very grateful to the directors of the excavations and to their teams: Giuseppa Tanda, Riccardo Cicilloni, Giacomo Paglietti, P. Francesco Serreli and Andrea Marotto. Many thanks to C. Bakels for providing us a table with all the plant macro remains found at Duos Nuraghes and for helpful comments on this paper. This work was funded by doctoral grant from the Ministero dell’Università e della Ricerca (MIUR). The work of L. Peña-Chocarro has been supported by the ERC through an Advanced Grant (ERC Grant Agreement no. 230561).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centro Conservazione Biodiversità (CCB), Dipartimento di Scienze della Vita e dell’Ambiente, Università degli Studi di Cagliari, V.le S. Ignazio da Laconi 11-13, 09123, Cagliari, Italy

    Mariano Ucchesu & Diego Sabato

  2. Escuela Española de Historia y Arqueología en Roma-CSIC, Via di Torre Argentina 18, 00186, Rome, Italy

    Leonor Peña-Chocarro

  3. GI Arqueobiología. Instituto de Historia (CCHS-CSIC), Albasanz 26-28, 28037, Madrid, Spain

    Leonor Peña-Chocarro

  4. Centro Interdipartimentale per la Preistoria e la Protostoria del Mediterraneo (CIPPM), Dipartimento di Storia, Beni Culturali e territorio, Università degli Studi di Cagliari, Piazza Arsenale 1, 09123, Cagliari, Italy

    Giuseppa Tanda

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  1. Mariano Ucchesu
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  2. Leonor Peña-Chocarro
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  3. Diego Sabato
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  4. Giuseppa Tanda
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Correspondence to Mariano Ucchesu.

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Communicated by C. C. Bakels.

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Ucchesu, M., Peña-Chocarro, L., Sabato, D. et al. Bronze Age subsistence in Sardinia, Italy: cultivated plants and wild resources. Veget Hist Archaeobot 24, 343–355 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-014-0470-2

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