- Ingela M. B. Wiman –
300 bc – forest decreasing in favor of evergreen vegetation, especially the olive family,
increased erosion processes, rising amount of wheat and olives, rising amounts of wild
grasses and plantain.
Analysis: a greater degree of mining activities, increased cultivation of olives and crops,
greater degree of pasture.
Around birth of Christ – drastic change, shoreline regressing, magnetic matter in
abundance, increased amounts of Castanea sativa.
Analysis: increased erosion and mining activities in Roman times, pollen indicates very
near-shore conditions, therefore, the presence of chestnut may indicate cultivation of this
plant in coppice woods (although with a thorough and yearly cutting, trees do not bloom
and thus do not produce pollen).
Conclusions drawn by this investigation combined with a survey of the Populonian
beach area indicate that there was a good supply of trees, wild or cultivated and that
extensive erosion processes did not occur until Roman times when both types of oaks
as well as Beech/Fagus and Elm/Ulmus were markedly declining. The rising amount of
Castanea sativa may not only be a result of agro-forestry and mining, however, since
the large nut was used for food both in Antiquity and modern times. It was common
to grind the nuts to make fl our for baking “poor man’s bread,” as the product was
called in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries ad. The absence of grape pollen is a
curious fact and may indicate that vines were not cultivated in this district. Charcoal
found in furnaces located on the beach in Populonia indicates that at least twigs from
coppice woods were used in Etrusco-Roman times.^31 At the time we conducted our
survey we had no funding for examining what types of trees were used, but our samples
are awaiting analysis.
How do these research data compare to results from later, more methodologically
sophisticated analyses? At least three well-documented investigations have been carried
out in the area. Two of the investigations were concerned mainly with earlier periods
and with the question of climate change at Lago dell’Accesa and are not overly useful
for evaluating the later Etruscan vegetation history.^32 The third investigation, however,
discusses the vegetation cover and the climate from 15,000 years ago in the area.^33 The
data are fully compatible with ours. Datings differ somewhat, possibly due to various
sampling techniques for the C14 analyses. We analyzed the pollen cores themselves
while the other investigation sampled wood and peat. Past lake-level changes are useful
when trying to differentiate human versus climate impact and the lowest lake levels in
Italy appeared around 1800 bc during an “aridity crisis.”^34 Pollen from vines is almost
negligible and indicates that the Colline Metallifere were not used for cultivating grapes
on a larger scale. Both papers, however, stress the important fact that larger deforestation
processes, combined with erosion processes, start around 300 bc with a marked rise
around the fi rst century ad. Contrary to Nilén, Mariotti Lippi et al. claim that the Erica
arborea, tree heather, is the most important wood species for metal reduction.^35 This is
a bush typical of wet or dry scrublands, extremely hard and heat-resistant. This might
explain the small twigs we found in the slag heaps on the beach of Populonia.
To conclude, these combined data support the idea that large-scale, systematic
deforestation activities were not part of Etruscan economic strategies. After the dry spell of
the eighteenth century bc, the climate became more humid around 1400 bc and Etruscan
times were a benign period as regards the climate, similar to today’s, with rainy autumns and