Examples of an interdisciplinary approach: case studies from late Holocene man-environment interaction in the Adige-Po Plain (Italy).

In the spirit of the seminar, this article reviews four case studies in which multidisciplinary methods and paradigms from physical and human geography, geoarchaeology, historical cartography and earth science have been used in an integrated manner in order to describes man-environment interaction during the most important territorialization phases in the late Holocene in the Adige-Po alluvial Plain. The floodplain is one of the most widespread forms of terrestrial landscape. From a physiographic point of view, it may be defined as a flat area (or with very low differences in altitude and minimum slopes), consisting of fine sediments, result of erosional and depositional processes of one or more rivers. A floodplain is constantly evolving over time and, according to geomorphological and sedimentological criteria, is the result of the overlap and the interdigitation of the previous flooding sediments. It is the area adjacent to a watercourse and it can be flooded when the river floods (Brown 1997; Bridge 2003). It is a complex of morphological units, among which the channel bodies, the meander forms (oxbow lakes, point bars, meander scrolls), the river bars, the banks (natural levees), the depressions (backswamps ) and the fans (crevasse-splays), leading to the origin of sedimentary structures characteristics. Floodplains and rivers are of great interest for the humankind because most of people rely on them for water supply, food, transport, source of raw material, power, waste disposal and so on. The Po Plain is one of the major alluvial plain of Europe: it hosts a very dense population (about one third of the italian population) and important agricultural and industrial activities. In particular, Adige-Po plain represents the transition between the Po Plain stricto sensu and the Venetian-Friulian Plain. Adige is the southernmost river of the Venetian Plain that is no tributary of Po River. Numerous archaeological researches show, in this alluvial plain, significant evidence of human presence since the Bronze Age (Bellintani and Zerbinati 1984; Bellintani 1986; Salzani 1990-91) and a continuous man-environmental interaction since that time to the present-day. In particular, the most important territorialization phases (Bertoncin 2004) occurred during Iron Age, Roman times (De Min 1984; Peretto 1994; Harari 1998) and the Venice Republic government (Magistrato alle Acque, 1733). Furthermore, the distal part of the Adige-Po plain represents the transition between continental and marine realm. It is connected with the southern Venice Lagoon and with the Adige-Po delta system. This whole area is a particularly fragile environment: superimposition of natural and human processes of different origin may cause great risk from natural and anthropic hazard like flooding (Bondesan et al. 1995), sudsidence (Carbognin and Tosi 2002), salt-water intrusion (Antonellini et al. 2008), pollution and technological hazards (Ariano 2007). For all this reasons the Adige-Po Plain represents a good laboratory for a geographer which applies an interdisciplinary approach.