Anthropogenic deposits from the Bronze Age site of Fondo Paviani (Verona, Italy) : pedochemical and micropedological characteristics

Fondo Paviani is a Bronze Age archaeological site located in the Valli Grandi Veronesi area in the lower Venetian plain (northeastern Italy). The inhabited area is surrounded by a moat and a quadrangular rampart, a structural characteristic specific to the so-called terramare, villages that were common in the alluvial plains both north and south of the Po River during the middle and recent Bronze Age. Dark-coloured anthropogenic deposits occurring inside the site of Fondo Paviani were exposed during archaeological excavations and along stratigraphic cross-sections. Here, the micropedological and pedochemical characters of the deposits have been used as a key to decipher the formation processes and post-depositional modifications involved in order to reconstruct the human activities and environmental conditions recorded in the stratigraphy. This reconstruction has been formulated by integrating the abovementioned analytical techniques with geomorphological, pedological and archaeological data. This study focuses on three main lines of research. First, it investigates the cultural and natural mechanisms responsible for the vertical accretion of anthropogenic deposits and for their dark colour. Secondly, it reveals the conversion of a part of the intra-site space to a cultivated area through the establishment of a ridge-and-furrow system in the final Bronze Age, the period in which population density of the site was decreasing. The phenomenon of the conversion of originally inhabited areas to cultivated space in terramare during phases of population change appears to be recurring and requires further investigation. Finally, this study records the occurrence of progressively wetter environmental conditions during and after the abandonment of the site in the final Bronze Age. This is marked by the overflow of muds from the unmanaged moat and by the successive deposition of wide alluvial covers related to the reactivation of springfed rivers in the Valli Grandi Veronesi area in response to a shift towards wetter climatic conditions.