The palaeoenvironmental history of the Neapolis (Naples, Italy) harbor basin from the Augustan Age up to the Late Antique period

In the last 20 years, archaeological excavations undertaken during the construction of the new Naples subway have unearthed the harbor basin of the Graeco-Roman town of Parthenope-Neapolis. The opening of a new archaeological dig (Line 6) in 2012 offered the opportunity to improve the previous knowledge about the basin evolution, due to the recovery of huge amounts of archaeological remains as well as of a thick succession of infilling sediments. The latter have been analyzed by means of sedimentological and paleontological analyses whose results have been treated through Compositional Data Analysis (CoDA). This approach has highlighted the palaeoenvironmental changes along the harbor basin infilling, from the Augustan Age up to the Late Antique period. The first infilling phase occurred in a marine infralittoral environment which evolved into a lagoon environment at the beginning of the 5th century AD. This change precedes the final closure of the bay at the end of the 5th century AD, due to increased alluvial inputs from inland, probably connected to both natural and anthropogenic causes.