THE ORIGIN OF GRAPEVINE CULTIVATION IN ITALY : THE ARCHAEOBOTANICAL EVIDENCE

Grapevine remains show that this plant has been important for humans since ancient times. this paper presents a synthesis of archaeobotanical studies on grapevine remains (pollen, wood, charcoal, seed/fruit and other botanical remains) from epigravettian to bronze age sites. carpological remains are the most important ones, because they often allow to distinguish cultivated and wild grapevines. Grapevine findings are rare in Mesolithic sites, they increase during Neolithic period and become frequent in bronze age. archaeobotanical data show that during Neolithic and in the early bronze age a good level of knowledge concerning grapevine utilization was already acquired; during Middle and late bronze age the grapevine diffusion increases. based on archaeobotanical data, the wild grapevine evolution by indigenous people was probably accompanied by an input of allochtonous vines from Mycenaean world, and then from hellenic world. therefore, the critical period of grapevine domestication can be placed between bronze age and early iron age. KeyworDs: archaeobotaNical GrapeviNe reMaiNs, VITIS VINIFERA l. ssp. SYLVESTRIS, VITIS VINIFERA l. ssp. VINIFERA, DoMesticatioN, cultivatioN, italy doi: 10.4462/annbotrm-10326 Notes dimorphic and the presence of hermaphrodite individuals is rare, generally below 5%; on the contrary, Vitis vinifera ssp. vinifera (the cultivated subspecies) is monoecious with hermaphrodite flowers (scossiroli, 1988). the hermaphroditism, recognized and selected since the very beginning of the domestication process, represents the botanical trait of main interest from the agronomical point of view. according to the traditional interpretation, the first domestication occurred in the region between caucasus and Mesopotamia, and resulted in the selection of the more productive subspecies, V. vinifera ssp. vinifera (fig. 1). Many genetic researches are currently in progress in order to examine in depth the evolution of grapevine in italy (Grassi et al., 2003, zecca et al., 2012). this paper presents a synthesis of archaeobotanical data on grapevine remains from epigravettian to bronze age in italy. 156 basin, except the southernmost infra-Mediterranean and non-Mediterranean zones (arnold et al., 1998). the cultivation and domestication of grapevine appears to have occurred between the 7th and the 4th millennium bc, in a geographical area between the black sea and iran. specifically, its origin is recognized by most authors in the hygrophilous forests located between the southern coast of the caspian sea and the eastern coast of the black sea (McGovern & rudolph, 1996; zohary & hopf, 2000). from this area, cultivated forms would have been spread by humans in the Near east, Middle east and central europe. Grapevine is cultivated in the sub-Mediterranean region, where the average annual temperatures and the average winter temperatures do not go, respectively, below 10°c and 0 °c. the discrimination between the two subspecies is based on the fact that Vitis vinifera ssp. sylvestris is dioecious and Marvelli s. / Ann. Bot. (Roma), 2013, 3: 155–163 fig. 1 Grapevine domestication centers with relative diffusion phases (i-vi) (forni 2012, modified). fig. 2 sites with grapevine remains at different ages. MATERIALS AND METHODS in total 112 sites were examined: epigravettian: 1, Mesolithic: 1, Neolithic: 41, eneolithic: 7, bronze age: 62 (fig. 2, 3, 4). a detailed list is reported elsewhere (De’ siena et al., in press). all branches of archaeobotany were involved. particularly, palynological, carpological and xylo-anthracological analyses were considered in this paper. Grapevine subspecies identification using pollen is difficult, and single flowers produce small amounts of pollen, whose dispersal is limited to a restricted area around the plant. in general, xylo-anthracological remains are not abundant,