Unveiling the Unknown Gela Coastal Paleoenviroments (Sicily Island, Southern Italy) During Late Holocene: New Tools for the Greek Harbour Site Location

The ancient city of Gela (built in the 7th century BCE) is located in the southern sector of the Sicily Island (Southern Italy) on a Pleistocene marine terrace near the mouth of the Gela River. Gela was one of the most important Greek colonies in the Mediterranean Sea, strate-gically positioned at the crossroads of the major maritime trade routes and with a rich pro-duction of cereals thanks to the fertile Gela River alluvial plain. To reconstruct the coastal and environmental configuration during the Greek period and to improve the understand-ing of the location of the harbour basin, a multidisciplinary approach was applied to a sector of the Gela River alluvial–coastal plain. This area, located very close to the ancient city, is known as Conca (Italian for “Basin”) and was identified through the analysis of historical and modern maps as well as aerial photographs. The multidisciplinary approach includes geomorphology (derived from maps and aerial photos), stratigraphy (boreholes and arche-ological trench), paleoecology (ostracoda, foraminifera and fossil contents of selected lay-ers), geochronology (14C dating of selected organic materials) and archeology (historical sources and maps, pottery fragments extracted from boreholes and trench layers). The main results show that this area was occupied by lower shoreface environments in the time inter-vals between 4.4 and 2.8 ka, which progressively transitioned to upper shoreface environ-ments until the Greek age. During the Roman period, these environments were significantly reduced due to repeated alluvial sedimentation of the Gela River transforming the area into fluvial–marshy environments. A time interval of aeolian sand deposition was recorded in the upper part of the coastal stratigraphical succession, which can be related to climatic con-ditions with high aridity. Available data show that marine environments persisted in the Conca sector during the Greek age, allowing hypothesizing the presence of an ancient har-bour in this area. The depth of the Greek age marine environments is estimated to be be-tween 4.5 and 7 m below the current ground level. Further investigation, mainly based on geophysical and stratigraphical methods, will be planned aimed at identifying the presence of buried archeological targets.