Quaternary

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 for settlements since prehistoric times. Thanks to the peaty sediments that characterise the area, archaeological materials and botanical remains have been exceptionally well preserved. Their study has shed light on a Neolithic pile-dwelling settlement that developed in various phases between c. 6350 and 5600 cal BP (c. 4400 and 3650 BC), and has also allowed for a detailed environmental reconstruction of the surrounding environment. A vertical sequence of 20 samples was analysed to study pollen, non-pollen palynomorphs and microcharcoals. An age-depth model was performed based on three radiocarbon dates. The palynological analysis provided insight into the response of vegetation to environmental changes caused by both climatic fluctuations and human pressure. In this sense, it was possible to highlight differences in vegetation cover, some fires, the use of woody resources, the spread of cereal fields, as well as the presence of other cultivated plants and plant processing by the people within the village. Full article

Phytolith analysis is a well-established archaeobotanical tool, having provided important insights into pre-Columbian crop cultivation and domestication across Amazonia through the Holocene. Yet, its use as a palaeoecological tool is in its infancy in Amazonia and its effectiveness for reconstructing pre-Columbian land-use beyond archaeological sites (i.e., ‘off-site’) has so far received little critical attention. This paper examines both new and previously published soil phytolith data from SW Amazonia to assess the robustness of this proxy for reconstructing pre-Columbian land-use. We conducted the study via off-site soil pits radiating 7.5 km beyond a geoglyph in Acre state, Brazil, and 50 km beyond a ring-ditch in northern Bolivia, spanning the expected gradients in historical land-use intensity. We found that the spatio-temporal patterns in palm phytolith data across our soil-pit transects support the hypothesis that pre-Columbian peoples enriched their forests with palms over several millennia, although phytoliths are limited in their ability to capture small-scale crop cultivation and deforestation. Despite these drawbacks, we conclude that off-site soil phytolith analysis can provide novel insights into pre-Columbian land use, provided it is effectively integrated with other land-use (e.g., charcoal) and archaeological data. Full article

The Late Holocene fossil pollen records from the Zemu glacier, located in Yabuk, North Sikkim, in the eastern Himalayas, effectively generated quantitative climate reconstructions based on the transfer function model. The transfer function model was developed by establishing a modern pollen–climate calibration set from the temperate alpine belt of North Sikkim. A redundancy analysis was carried out to detect the pattern of variation of climatic variables in the modern pollen datasets. The mean annual precipitation (MAP) and mean temperature of the warming month (MTWA) had the strongest influence on the composition of the modern pollen samples among the climatic variables considered in the analysis. Proxy data in the form of fossil pollen records were analyzed for reconstructing past climate based upon the relationships between modern pollen vegetation assemblages and climatic patterns. Transfer functions for MAP and MTWA were developed with the partial least squares (PLS) approach, and model performance was assessed using leave-one-out cross-validation. The validated model was used to reconstruct MAP and MTWA for the last 2992 cal years BP (1042 BC) in North Sikkim. The variability observed in the reconstructions was analyzed for past global climatic events. It was further compared with the available regional and hemispheric proxy-based climate reconstructions. The reconstructions captured comparable Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and Little Ice Age (LIA)-like events from the Zemu glacier region. The fossil pollen data and climate reconstructions were further compared with the mineral magnetism data of the subsurface sediment profile. Full article

While the North American mylodont sloth, Parmylodon harlani, has been identified in multiple localities in Mexico, most of these records are from the southern part of the country. Consequently, there is a large geographic gap between its distribution in Mexico and the more northern records of the species in the United States. The recovery of the remains of multiple individuals of Paramylodon harlani, as part of a late Pleistocene fauna in San Clemente de Térapa, Sonora, Mexico, partially fills this geographic gap and provides a broader understanding of the differences in the species’ ecology over a wide latitudinal range. A comparison of the paleoecology of the Térapa site with other sites with P. harlani in the fauna to the south and north provides valuable information on how regional topography and different plant communities impact the sloth’s distribution and underlying causes for its extinction. Full article

The Gulf of Corinth is a semi-isolated basin in central Greece interrupting the Pindus Mountain Range, which nowadays is a biodiversity hotspot. Considering its key location, deep drilling was carried out within the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP; Expedition 381: Corinth Active Rift Development) aiming to improve our understanding of climatic and environmental evolution in the region. Here, we present a new long pollen record from a Mediterranean setting in the southernmost tip of the Balkan Peninsula recording the vegetation succession within the Quaternary. The Corinth pollen record shows no major shifts in arboreal pollen between glacial and interglacial intervals, while Mediterranean and mesophilous taxa remain abundant throughout the study interval. During interglacials, the most frequent reconstructed biomes are cool mixed evergreen needleleaf (CMIX) and deciduous broadleaf forests (DBWB), while graminoid with forb (GRAM) and xerophytic shrubs (XSHB) dominate within glacials. Our findings support the hypothesis that the study area was a significant refugium, providing suitable habitats for Mediterranean, mesophilous and montane trees during successive Quaternary climate cycles. Full article

Buried river valleys from the Neogene–Quaternary time are widespread throughout the Middle Volga region of the Russian Plain. They have been studied for a long period, since the 1940s, with the last major generalizations dating back to the 1980s. This paper presents new results based on GIS mapping using materials from the state geological study of the region in 1960–1970, 1984–1996 and 2000–2002. On the whole, the pattern of the buried valley network is close to the modern valley network of the region. During the Quaternary, the right-sided displacement of the valley incisions prevailed. The incisions of modern river valleys are located above the Neogene (pre-Akchagyl) incisions almost throughout the entire territory. The vertical displacement amplitude ranges from 30 to 200 m. The morphometric characteristics of the paleovalleys (the depth and width of the incisions, as well as the gradients of the bottoms of the paleovalleys) exceeded modern ones. The maximum values were typical for the middle Paleo-Volga valley: the width of the valley reached 10 km, the incision depth was−201.4 m below sea level and the bottom gradient was 0.9–5.0 m/km. The most important factor that influenced the position of paleovalleys and their morphological appearance was fluctuations in the level of the Caspian paleowaterbody. According to this study, the development of paleovalleys began in the Miocene and ended in the Early Quaternary. The alluvial–lacustrine type of sedimentation was predominant. The results of this work contribute to the study of the paleogeography of the Cenozoic of the southeast of the Russian Plain. Full article

Crop yield prediction is one of the crucial components of agriculture that plays an important role in the decision-making process for sustainable agriculture. Remote sensing provides the most efficient and cost-effective solution for the measurement of important agricultural parameters such as soil moisture level, but retrieval of the soil moisture contents from coarse resolution datasets, especially microwave datasets, remains a challenging task. In the present work, a machine learning-based framework is proposed to generate the enhanced resolution soil moisture products, i.e., classified maps and change maps, using an optical-based moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) and microwave-based scatterometer satellite (SCATSAT-1) datasets. In the proposed framework, nearest-neighbor-based image fusion (NNIF), artificial neural networks (ANN), and post-classification-based change detection (PCCD) have been integrated to generate thematic and change maps. To confirm the effectiveness of the proposed framework, random forest post-classification-based change detection (RFPCD) has also been implemented, and it is concluded that the proposed framework achieved better results (88.67–91.80%) as compared to the RFPCD (86.80–87.80%) in the computation of change maps with σ°-HH. This study is important in terms of crop yield prediction analysis via the delivery of enhanced-resolution soil moisture products under all weather conditions. Full article

Earthquake precursors are the indicators that appear before an earthquake. The release of radon gas, ionospheric disturbances, anomalous animal behavior, and so on are examples of seismic and aseismic events. Ionospheric perturbations can be proved to be a reliable method in earthquake prediction. The GNSS data detect changes in the ionosphere through the time lag of the transmitted GPS signals recorded at the Earth-based receivers. A negative TEC anomaly is caused by the stress released from the rocks before the earthquake, which elevates positive ions or p-holes in the atmosphere and decreases the ions in the ionosphere. A positive TEC anomaly follows this because of the increase in ions in the ionosphere. The ionospheric disruption in the Himalayan region is examined before five random earthquakes. For this, data from 15 separate GNSS stations are investigated using IONOLAB-TEC. A promising total electron content (TEC) data estimate with a temporal resolution of 30 s was analyzed. The results of the TEC data analysis depict the anomaly a month before the five earthquakes, followed by the later perturbation in the earthquake preparation zone. TEC anomalies are enhanced more by the uniform spatial distribution of GNSS stations in the epicentral region than by randomly distributed stations. The results of IONOLAB-TEC and the widely used GPS-TEC software were compared. Owing to its temporal resolution, IONOLAB-TEC has edge over the GPS-TEC software in that it can identify even the slightest negative anomalies before an earthquake. Full article

Blades as a component of lithic assemblages hold significant importance to understanding the more recent part of human evolution, particularly with regard to the emergence and adaptations of Homo sapiens. The systematic production of elongated stone blanks provides several advantages, including a longer cutting edge and high efficiency in raw material utility. However, the reasons behind the development of these technological forms and the chronological patterns of systematic blade production remain poorly understood in many regions, despite a clear overall intensification in the Late Pleistocene. The South Asian Paleolithic archive is full of blade-bearing assemblages, most of which are defined as Upper Paleolithic or Late Paleolithic. However, many of these previously assumed ‘Upper Paleolithic’ tool components prominently appear in Middle Paleolithic contexts. Here, we discuss some of the most recent case studies of blade-bearing assemblages from Eastern Gujarat that show an in situ emergence of blade technology from advanced Middle Paleolithic technology, suggesting localized origins of blade technology. Full article

Roman fish tanks are found in various coastal regions of the Mediterranean, although the vast majority is found on the Tyrrhenian coast of Italy. In this work, a database was developed with information on 62 fish tanks along the Mediterranean coasts to document and compare their features and characteristics. The analysis of the developed database from the Mediterranean fish tanks has shown that, among the 62 fish tanks, ~56% were cut into the rock, indicating that this type of construction was the most popular at that time and probably had advantages over the others. Fish tanks as sea level indicators can provide accurate data on the sea level 2000 years ago. Well-preserved installations with prominent architectural features have a crucial role in determining the paleo sea level. The architectural elements that are mostly used in fish tanks for paleo sea level reconstructions are the crepido, cataractae and channels. Besides the scientific importance of the fish tanks as sea level markers, they also have great cultural and historical significance. Fish tanks can be promoted as heritage monuments and scholarly models to strengthen awareness about climate change, sea level rise and its consequences. Full article

Typical patterns of the Late Pleistocene loess–paleosol units are preserved in the Novo Orahovo brickyard, Northern Serbia. Presented preliminary luminescence chronology supports the chronostratigraphic interpretations of global isotopic marine climate reconstructions. Magnetic susceptibility and sedimentological evidence exhibit general similarities with the marine oxygen-isotope stratigraphy. These records provide new insights into the dust accumulation regimes over the eastern side of the Bačka loess plateau and offer new paleoenvironmental information for the region. They represent an important step forward towards the establishment of a catena from the thin loess-like sediments of the Banat foothills in the east towards the thicker and seemingly more complete loess sections of the southeastern and central Carpathian Basin. Grain-size data from the loess record of Nova Orahovo explain the regional differentiation in dust deposition. Full article

The geomorphic expression of active faulting and distinction of paleoseismic events in areas that are rapidly obscured by erosion/sedimentation still remains a considerable scientific problem. The present article discusses the revealing of surface faulting ruptures and their parameters to identify capable faults without trenching and to estimate the magnitude of earthquakes. The case study was at Cape Rytyi, located in Baikal-Lena Nature Reserve on the northwestern shore of Lake Baikal. Based on unmanned aerial photography, GPR, and structural observations, we mapped and investigated the relation between geomorphological forms and ruptures. The obtained results show that past landslides and paleoruptures at Cape Rytyi and its surroundings are associated with at least two earthquakes. The Mw of the earlier event was 7.3 (Ms = 7.4); the Mw of the later one was 7.1 (Ms = 7.3). The paleoruptures in the distal part of the delta of the Rita River and on the southeastern slope of the Baikal Ridge were included in the seismogenic rupture zone, which traces some 37 km along the Kocherikovsky fault. The approximate intervals in which earthquakes occurred are 12–5 ka and 4–0.3 ka, respectively. The applied analysis methods can be useful for paleoseismology and assessing seismic hazards in similar regions elsewhere. Full article

A high-resolution multiproxy sedimentary record comprising pollen, charcoal, trace element, stratigraphy and particle size data is used to reveal environmental changes from the mangrove ecosystem at Unguja Ukuu, Zanzibar, Tanzania, over the last 5000 years. Historical human–environment interactions over the last millennia are explored by a comparison of the stratigraphic and archaeological data. The area was characterised by a mixture of mangrove forest and beaches, indicating a low level of tidal inundation to at least 3300 BCE. From 2750 BCE, mangrove forest expanded as the area experienced sea-level rise. Further sea-level rise is recorded between 600 and 1100 CE, indicated by the pollen record, particle size analysis and the presence of shell fragments. After 1100 CE, mangrove forest decreased with back mangrove species increasing, indicating a falling sea level. Cocos nucifera decreased after 1900 CE, which reflects a recent sea-level rise and possibly a phase of exploitation. Cereal pollen shows a high presence at around 1500 CE, which coincided with the arrival of the Portuguese on Zanzibar and the transition to Omani colonisation. The sedimentation rate in the core top indicates that mangroves in Unguja Ukuu cannot keep pace with the current rate of sea-level rise. Full article

The acquisition of large prey by hominins living during the Marine Isotope Stage 3, including Neanderthals and Anatomically Modern Humans, had nutritional and bioenergetic implications: these contain high fat amounts, provide a high energy return, and the strategies and skills required to acquire small prey were different from those required to acquire the former. Vitamin C availability at several MIS 3 periods could have had a strong seasonal variability and would have been decisive for hominin groups’ survival. During the cold periods of the MIS 3, Paleolithic hominins had variable available amounts of vitamin C-containing plants only in the short summers, and for the remainder of the year, viscera would have been their best source of vitamin C. Meanwhile, the dependence on small mammals could have caused an erratic distribution of viscera to be consumed by such hominins, thus leading to chronic scurvy, and compromising their survival. Then, the hunting of large mammals would have helped to meet the daily vitamin C needs, besides an efficient energy supply. Therefore, the decline of large prey during the MIS 3 could have been critical for hominins survival, and thus the efficient exploitation of alternative vitamin C-rich food resources such as birds and aquatic animals could have favored the evolutionary success of hominin populations. Full article

The vegetation history of the Texas Gulf Coastal Plain in the Holocene is considered according to pollen evidence from three coring sites where both terrestrial and marine ecology are reconstructed. These pollen sites record oscillations in the limit of the Southeastern US Forest zone in relation to climate changes, with a major, southward migration of the forest limit and expansion of the range limit of Betula nigra being recorded in the 6th millennium BP and a northward migration in the 4th millennium BP. The appearance of Rhizophora pollen also indicates increased tropical influence in the Middle Holocene. Moreover, changes in the salinity profiles of estuaries are reconstructed in relation to broader coastal environmental changes, such as sea-level oscillations and the formation of barrier islands, with a major sea-level transgression phase being recorded in the 4th millennium BP and still-stand conditions after the 3rd millennium BP. These vegetation changes are finally compared to occupational evidence of prehistoric humans in the Central Texas Gulf Coastal Plain region in relation to ecological factors. Here, human occupation of the coastal zone is correlated with afforestation, the proliferation of pecan and the emergence of low-salinity estuaries. Full article

With the name ‘Temesa’ (Latin Tempsa), the ancients identified a settlement located along the Tyrrhenian coast of Calabria, cited by sources as an international metal exchange emporium. The town is mentioned by Homer as being famous in the ancient world for the production of bronze, and in the I century A.D. Strabo wrote that there were rich copper mines near the city. Many years of study led to the recognition of Temesa as a complex urban system located between the Oliva and Savuto rivers, near Amantea. To confirm this hypothesis, we searched, in the surrounding rocky outcrops, for the presence of minerals useful for the extraction of iron and copper. Samples of 3 different rock stratifications were taken near the protohistoric settlement of Serra Aiello. The observation under an polarized reflected light microscope and the X-ray diffraction patterns revealed the presence of many minerals useful for the extraction of iron and copper in every sample. The heating of samples under both oxidizing and reducing conditions helped us to better quantify copper and iron minerals content causing, at the same time, the appearance of a marked paramagnetic behavior that could be associated with the presence of goethite. X ray fluorescence analysis showed a high concentration of iron and a low copper content. Full article

There are many opinions and arguments about the types of weapons that Neanderthals may have used. We list five assumptions about Neanderthal weapon-assisted hunting and suggest that the tip cross-sectional area (TCSA) approach may be used to assess these, and to provide a hypothetical overview of stone-tipped weaponry used in south eastern France between MIS 7 and MIS 3. We analysed stone points from Abri du Maras, Saint-Marcel, Grotte du Figuier, and Payre, and discuss possible hunting strategies in tandem with faunal evidence. Our results suggest that early Neanderthals may have hunted with bimanual thrusting spears in combination with one-handed stabbing spears, but that later groups possibly introduced javelin hunting to the Neanderthal arsenal. Stone-tipped assegais or one-handed stabbing spears, however, stand out as the Neanderthal weapons of choice throughout the Middle Palaeolithic, and we discuss the adaptive advantages of hunting with these weapons. Comparative results that include assemblages from elsewhere in the Old World suggest similarities in hunting with stone-tipped weapons between Neanderthal and H. sapiens before MIS 5, marked differences during MIS 5–4, but similarities again during MIS 3. We suggest that caution is needed when attributing MIS 3 point assemblages to Neanderthals based on age and/or technology only. Full article

The dispersal of primitive elephantines and monodactyl equids in Eurasia has long been regarded as representative of a substantial turnover in mammal faunas, denoting the spread of open environments linked to the onset of cold and dry conditions in the Northern Hemisphere. During the 1980s, this event was named the “Elephant-Equus event” and it was correlated with the Gauss-Matuyama reversal, today corresponding to the Pliocene-Pleistocene transition and the beginning of the Quaternary, dated at ~2.6 Ma. Therefore, the Elephant-Equus event became a concept of prominent biochronological and paleoecological significance, especially in western Europe. Yet, uncertainties surrounding the taxonomy and chronology of early “elephant” and “Equus”, as well as conceptual differences in adopting (or understanding) the Elephant-Equus event as an intercontinental dispersal event or as a stratigraphic datum, engendered ambiguity and debate. Here, we provide a succinct review of the Elephant-Equus event, considering separately the available evidence on the “elephant” and the “Equus”. Elephantines dispersed out of Africa during the Pliocene (Piacenzian). Their earliest calibrated occurrences from eastern Europe date at ~3.2 Ma and they are usually referred to Mammuthus rumanus, although the allocation of several samples to this species is tentative. Available dating constraints for other localities do not resolve whether the dispersal of Mammuthus was synchronous across Eurasia, but this possibility cannot be ruled out. The spread of Mammuthus was part of an intercontinental faunal exchange between Africa and Eurasia that occurred during the Piacenzian, but in this scenario, Mammuthus is quite unique in being the only genus of African origin dispersing to western Eurasia. The arrival of monodactyl equids from North America coincides with the Pliocene-Pleistocene transition, with several occurrences dated or calibrated at ~2.6 Ma and no compelling evidence prior to this age. In Europe, early monodactyl equids are often aligned to Equus livenzovensis, but the material from the type locality of this species is chronologically time-averaged and taxonomically heterogeneous, and western European samples are seldom abundant or informative. Regardless, this does not diminish the biochronological significance of the “Equus event”. Indeed, while the term “Elephant-Equus event” should no longer be used, as the appearance of elephantines in the European fossil record markedly precedes that of monodactyl equids, we endorse the use of the “Equus event” as a valid alternative to refer to the intercontinental dispersal event that characterizes the middle Villafranchian faunal turnover, epitomized by but not limited to monodactyl equids. Full article