The Troina Project:

THE LANDSCAPE DATING PROGRAMME

The proposal for 2003 is an enhancement of the dating of the archaeological and environmental episodes, revealed by the initial fieldwork. The sequence of the later prehistoric sites found in fieldwork (1997-2001) will be dated in parallel with the depositional sequence in the natural landscape. The interdisciplinary team of Dr. Simon Stoddart (Cambridge), Dr. Charles French (Cambridge), Dr. Caroline Malone (British Museum), Dr. Richard Bailey (Oxford), Matthew Fitzjohn (Liverpool), Lucy Walker (Cambridge) and Gianna Ayala (Cambridge) will submit already selected radiocarbon samples from bones and carbonised seeds, thermoluminescence samples from pottery and OSL samples from sediments to the Oxford laboratory to investigate definitively the contemporaneity and inferred relationship between the clearance for intensive agriculture and pastoral activities and landscape degradation.