Palaeolandscape reconstructions for the Northern Adriatic: Inundation models, depositional environments, and potential archaeological implications

It has become increasingly clear that submerged landscapes can help address a range of archaeological questions from topics such as human migrations, coastal settlement in prehistory, and responses to sea level change. Our ability to approach such debates, however, is limited by our knowledge of paleogeographic developments at a human scale. This is still lacking for many regions, including the Northern Adriatic Sea, one of the largest submerged landmasses in Europe and a region very sensitive to landscape changes due to its fluvially-influenced geomorphological setting. In this study, we present palaeolandscape reconstructions for the Northern Adriatic between 9000 and 4000 cal BC, based on published sedimentary core data and unpublished high-resolution geophysical data. To achieve this, different depositional environments were identified and inundation models produced to characterise the palaeolandscape both from a spatial and temporal dimension. Different generations of barrier-backbarrier complexes are identified as well as lagoon, marsh, and delta environments developing during phases of stasis in sea level rise and rapidly drowned during periods of intense inundation. Our palaeolandscape reconstructions have direct archaeological implications for both the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods. The region's ancient coastal wetlands would have been extremely attractive to forager communities, but these societies would have had to respond to environmental changes linked to sea level rise. Likewise, when farming was spreading along the Northern Adriatic coastlines, major paleogeographic developments would have been occurring. We therefore demonstrate the importance of reconstructing submerged landscapes to our understanding of several key archaeological themes.