标题：Sharing the Agrarian Knowledge with Archaeology: First Evidence of the Dimorphism of <i>Vitis</i> Pollen from the Middle Bronze Age of N Italy (Terramara Santa Rosa di Poviglio)
摘要：The recovery of inaperturate pollen from functionally female flowers in archaeological layers opens the question of a possible pollen-based discrimination between wild and domesticated <i>Vitis vinifera</i> in prehistoric times. Pollen analysis applied to archaeology has not routinely considered the existence of pollen dimorphism in <i>Vitis</i>, a well-known trait in the field of agrarian studies. Therefore, the inaperturate shape of grapevine pollen is ignored by studies on the archaeobotanical history of viticulture. In this paper we investigate pollen morphology of the domesticated and wild subspecies of<i> V. vinifera</i>, and report the first evidence of inaperturate <i>Vitis</i> pollen from an archaeological site. We studied exemplar cases of plants with hermaphroditic flowers, belonging to the subspecies <i>vinifera </i>with fully developed male and female organs, cases of dioecious plants with male or female flowers, belonging to the wild subspecies <i>sylvestris </i>and cases of <i>V. vinifera </i>subsp. <i>vinifera</i> with morphologically hermaphroditic but functionally female flowers. The pollen produced by hermaphroditic and male flowers is usually trizonocolporate; the pollen produced by female flowers is inaperturate. This paper reports on the inaperturate pollen of <i>Vitis</i> found in an archeological site of the Po Plain, Northern Italy. The site dated to the Bronze Age, which is known to have been a critical age for the use of this plant with a transition from wild to domesticated <i>Vitis</i> in central Mediterranean. Can the inaperturate <i>Vitis</i> pollen be a marker of wild <i>Vitis vinifera</i> in prehistoric times? Palynology suggests a possible new investigation strategy on the ancient history of the wild and cultivated grapevine. The pollen dimorphism also implies a different production and dispersal of pollen of the wild and the domesticated subspecies. Grapevine plants are palynologically different from the other Mediterranean "cultural trees". In fact, <i>Olea</i>, <i>Juglans </i>and<i> Castanea</i> which are included in the OJC index, have the same pollen morphology and the same pollen dispersal, in wild and domesticated plants. In contrast, the signal of <i>Vitis</i> pollen in past records may be different depending on the hermaphroditic or dioecious subspecies.
