BRAIN's mission is to organise the archaeobotanical information on sites located in Italy and make it universally accessible and useful.

BRAIN contains the census of the sites that have been scientifically analysed for all types of plant remains with focus on archaeological sites attributed to the Holocene and distributed across an area covering continental Italy, the Italian peninsula (including the Republic of San Marino) and the islands.

In this website you can find the location and chronology of the sites, mainly archaeological sites, that have been studied from a botanical point of view by Italian and foreign scientists. This basic step is essential to understanding how extended this research is, how many analyses have been done, how many human-modified settlements (on-sites) are distributed near human-influenced records such as lake and other terrestrial sedimentary sequences (off-sites). The website deals with one science involving Palynology, Archaeobotany, Palaeoecology, Botany, Archaeology, Archaeometry.
BRAIN shows what potential this field of science has for the purposes of environmental restoration and habitat preservation, and for the cultural heritage of Italy.

BRAIN is a database on bio-cultural issues and it may be useful for projects dealing with landscape evolution, ethnography and ethnobotany, the application of biology to archaeology, the application of archaeology to ecology, botany and nature conservation: these are among the best tools to develop this multifaceted science.

BRAIN proposes a new cooperative way to collect data, inform scholars and work in researches on Archaeobotany. The way to do and use a classical science in a modern fashion is possible and innovative.

The BRAIN network has been officially presented at the Mediterranean Palynology Symposium - MedPalyno Congress of Rome, September 10 2015,
by the BRAIN coordinator Anna Maria Mercuri.

Publications

• Mercuri A.M., Allevato E., Arobba D., Bandini Mazzanti M., Bosi G., Caramiello R., Castiglioni E., Carra M.L., Celant A., Costantini L., Di Pasquale G., Fiorentino G., Florenzano A., Guido M., Marchesini M., Mariotti Lippi M., Marvelli S., Miola A., Montanari C., Nisbet R., Peña-Chocarro L., Perego R., Ravazzi C., Rottoli M., Sadori L., Ucchesu M., Rinaldi R., 2015 - Pollen and macroremains from Holocene archaeological sites: a dataset for the understanding of the bio-cultural diversity of the Italian landscape. Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology 218: 250-266

• Mariotti Lippi M., Bandini Mazzanti M., Bosi G., Buonincontri M., Castiglioni E., Di Pasquale G., Giardini M., Marchesini M., Miola A., Montanari C., Rottoli M., Sadori L., Mercuri A.M., Archeobotanica/Archaeobotany, in: Storia delle piante fossili in Italia/Palaeobotany of Italy, Kustatscher E., Roghi G., Bertini A., Miola A. (a cura di), Pubblicazione del Museo di Scienze Naturali dell'Alto Adige n. 9, Bolzano 2014, pp. 345-384.

• Martinetto E., Ardenghi N.M.G., Arobba D., Bertini A., Bosi G., Caramiello R., Castiglioni E., Florenzano A., Maritan M., Mazzanti, Mercuri A.M., Miola A., Perego R., Ravazzi C., Rinaldi R., Rottoli M., 2015 – Digging up the roots of the Italian flora, 1. Fossil record of Lycopus (Lamiaceae, Mentheae). Atti della Riunione scientifica del Gruppo Floristica,Tassonomia ed Evoluzione della Società Botanica Italiana “Approfondimenti floristici e sistematici sulla flora d'Italia.”, 20-21 novembre 2015, Orto Botanico di Roma, Università La Sapienza, Roma.

• Benes J., Karg S., Kodydkova K., Mercuri A.M., Bosi G., Pokorna A., Preusz M., Rosch M., Fischer E., Arobba D., Bandini Mazzanti M., Buonicorti M., Caramiello R., Carra M.L., Castiglioni E., Celant A., Costantini L., Fiorentino G., Marchesini M., Mariotti Lippi M., Maritan M., Marvelli S., Masi A., Miola A., Mori Secci M., Nisbet R., Pena-Chocarro L., Pepe C., Rinaldi R., Rottoli M., Sabato D., Sadori L., Ucchesu M. 2015 - Archaeobotanical evidence of fig (Ficus carica L.) in Europe on the axis of south-north gradient. Preliminary information about Papaver Centre Research Project. In: Book of Abstracts of 11th Conference of Environmental Archaeology. 9-11 February 2015, České Budějovice, Czech Republic, p. 9. ISBN: 9788073944957.

Posters

• Mercuri A.M., Allevato E., Arobba D., Bandini Mazzanti M., Bosi G., Caramiello R., Castiglioni E., Carra M.L., Celant A., Costantini L., Di Pasquale G., Fiorentino G., Florenzano A., Guido M., Marchesini M., Mariotti Lippi M., Marvelli S., Miola A., Montanari C., Nisbet R., Peña-Chocarro L., Perego R., Ravazzi C., Rottoli M., Sadori L., Ucchesu M., Rinaldi R., 2014 - The site density of archaeobotanical researches as key to the understanding the bio-cultural diversity of the Italian landscapes. In: Workshop Human-Climate-Ecosystem Interactions. 3-7 February 2014, University of Leuven, Belgium.