Cultivated and wild plant exploitation during the Phoenician and Punic period in Sardinia: the contribution of the waterlogged finds

The project focuses on the study of the exploitation of the vegetal species in Sardinia during the Archaic and Punic period, analysing vegetal macroremains recovered on archaeological sites dated from the 7th to the 3rd century BC. It centres in particular on seeds and fruits which proceed from coastal and underwater sites, where the special environment enabled an optimal preservation of those organic materials. The sites selected for the study were the Mistras Lagoon, in Central-West Sardinia, identified as the harbour of Tharros during the 7th-3rd century BC; the Santa Giusta Lagoon, also in central-west Sardinia, interested by the presence of an underwater site of uncertain interpretation, connected with the neighbouring city of Othoca, and the coast of Nora-Pula in South Sardinia. The vegetal macroremains found during different archaeological excavations on the Mistras Lagoon, thanks to the systematic sampling of the stratigraphic units, were subject to archaeobotanical analysis. They were selected and studied at the stereomicroscope, identifying the taxa thanks to modern reference collections and botanical atlases. The study put in evidence the great presence of many cultivated species, starting from cereals and pulses, continuing with extremely high percentages of grapevine and fig, and a variety of other plants as olive, plum, pomegranate, melon, different types of nuts, and the unprecedented finding of aromatic plants as the coriander and the dill. The spontaneous vegetation recorded depicts from one side the presence of species typical of wetlands, as well as other characteristics of the Mediterranean maquis; more importantly the abundance of ruderal plants is attested, indicating an environment highly influenced by human activities, and in particular by the presence of pastures and cultivations. All the data seem to point to a pretty intensive development of the agriculture in the area during that period, characterised by a diversification of the cultures. From the Santa Giusta Lagoon was analysed the content of a transport amphora, dating to the Archaic period. Abundant grape pips were found from the sieving of the sediment, in association with animal bones, presumably of ovicaprid. This type of content is well known from past findings from the same lagoon and from other underwater sites of the Island; the most accepted hypothesis interprets them as the evidence of some sort of preservation of the meat in a by-product of the grapevine. The great novelty of the new finding analysed in the present study is that abundant remains of coriander were also found in the content; the spice, attested here and in Mistras for the first time in a Sardinian context, could have been used as an ingredient for the peculiar meat product. The archaeobotanical analysis were integrated by the morphometric study of the endocarps of Olea europaea L. and of the pips of Vitis vinifera L. The digital images obtained from the scanning of the olive endocarps found in Mistras and Santa Giusta were compared to the images of modern endocarp samples, pertaining to the wild and the cultivated subspecies. The morphometric and statistical analysis revealed the presence of wild morphotypes in the Santa Giusta Lagoon, and of a mixture of wild and domesticated ones in Mistras. In addition, the endocarps from Mistras attributable to the domesticated subspecies, found a great affinity with some of the most typical cultivar actually grown in the Island. Analogously, the grape pips selected in Mistras, in Santa Giusta, and in Nora, were compared thanks to morphometric analysis to modern samples of wild and domesticated grapevine. Each one of the archaeological groups revealed a predominant presence of domesticated morphotypes. Moreover, the existence of different varieties in the assemblages was proved, corroborating the hypothesis on the high degree of development reached by the viticulture in the period under study.