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Archaeological and historiographical implications of recent uplift of the Peloro Peninsula, NE Sicily

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Carla Bottari  and
Pietro Carveni
Carla Bottari*
Affiliation:
Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Roma, Italy
Pietro Carveni
Affiliation:
Dipartimento di Scienze Geologiche, Università di Catania, Italy
*
⁎Corresponding author. Carla Bottari Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Via di Vigna Murata 605, 00143 Roma. Fax: +39 6 51860397. E-mail addresses:[email protected] (C. Bottari), [email protected] (P. Carveni).
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Abstract

In ancient times, the name “Peloro” was used to indicate an anthropic area that gradually developed around the first known human settlement on the Sicilian shore near the Straits of Messina. Since the 5th century BC, historians have documented that numerous naval armadas landed for long periods at Peloro. However, the present-day morphology of the Peloro Cape Peninsula does not have any protected inlet that would offer a location to repair hundreds of ships, as has been documented by historical sources. To address this discrepancy, geomorphologic data were collected and analyzed to verify whether historical documents were consistent with the palaeotopography of the area. This approach is based on the analysis of the morphotectonic evolution of the coastal lowland that resulted from regional uplift over the Quaternary and Holocene. The results indicate that the harbour was located in the basin of the Pantano Piccolo salt marsh, and was large and deep enough to have sheltered up to 320 ships.

Keywords

Straits of MessinaPantano Piccolo salt marshMorphotectonicPalaeotopography modeling
Type
Research Article
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 72 , Issue 1 , July 2009 , pp. 38 - 46
Copyright
University of Washington

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