CHARACTERIZATION OF CARBONACEOUS FRACTIONS FROM THREE CULTURAL LAYERS OF DIFFERENT AGE FROM NORTH EAST ITALY

Cultural layers can be defined as soil deposits resulting from past settlements and human activities on natural soils. Materials from past domestic activities (i.e., waste, burned material, artifacts, etc.) buried into the soil matrix can be used to reconstruct human impact in a specific area in the past. Fire accompanied human development from its very beginning, and charcoal accumulation in soils and sediments is widely used as indirect evidence of human passage. In European towns, cultural layers with similar characteristics (dark, thick, and poorly stratified), have been recently defined as “Dark Earth” (DE) but their age, origin, and composition may differ significantly site-by-site. This study examined three different sites in the North-Eastern Italy, where DE layers with similar characteristics were identified. The primary aim of this research was to understand the source and human impacts that led to the development of DE layers by evaluating and characterizing their geochemistry. A detailed characterization of these sites, evaluating both features and abundance of charred material from each layer, was performed.