## 3 Coastal Georadneaology of the Largest Mediterranean Islands: A Brief Overview and Main Highlights
### Bioindicators  
Micro and macrofaunal remains are the best materials for directly determining salinity fluctuation prior to characterizing the type of connection with the open sea and the degree of confinement. Definition of characteristic assemblages for marine, brackish and freshwater environments is therefore crucial to precisely reconstruct the evolution of coastal landscapes. Specialists in the identification of molluscs, ostracods, foraminifera and diatoms are involved in this aspect of the geoarchaeological approach. Pollen and NPP identifications  
Not all coastal wetlands lend themselves to the accurate, palynology-based reconstruction of vegetation history. In particular, those associated with river deltas can be largely influenced by considerable deposition of older materials originating across the whole catchment area (from alluvial terraces, for example). The procuration of continuous palynological series is difficult in such environments, and the frequent detrital input brings reworked materials via continental and/or marine dynamics. As such, the most appropriate environments for conducting pollen identification of homogeneous sediments (that is, showing no hiatus in sediment accumulation) in Corsica are the lagoons and coastal ponds that formed parallel to the shoreline behind a coastal barrier and were mainly formed by marine-to-coastal dynamics. The clayey-silty fraction of sediments is generally investigated for pollen grains and determination of NPPs. NPPs record former environmental conditions, allowing to assess trophic stage, moisture conditions, dry phases, pastoral activities, disturbances and erosion within the study area [68]. The aim of identifying pollen is to reconstruct past vegetation composition and to evaluate the direct impacts of past land use and climate changes. Evaluating spatial resolution of palynological data is quite complex since most of the pollen contained in a given sample can originate from very local to very widespread sources due to aeolian processes. The reliability of pollen determination and subsequent interpretation depends on a minimum concentration of pollen grains. To evaluate the direct evidence of cereal cultivation, identification of the pollen of Cerealia-type is the most relevant procedure. However, it must be noted that soil disturbance due to human activities can also be deduced indirectly from the presence of herbaceous taxa (ruderals) concurrent with the opening of woodlands. In addition to cereal cultivation, pastoral activities can be evidenced by the identification of NPPs where generally coprophilous fungi such as Sporormiella or Sordaria are well preserved in the sediments. Again, indirect evidence can be obtained by the identification of nitrophilous plants that are indicative of grazing activities. Over the last three decades in Corsica, coastal wetlands have been intensively investigated to reconstruct vegetation history [69; 70; 71; 92]. However, it is only during the last decade that robust chronostriography has been used to explore Human-Environment interactions at a high temporal resolution. Anthracology and fire signal reconstruction based on microcharcoals  
The charcoal concentration in sediments is often regarded as a direct impact of human activities on vegetation cover. Fire is both a natural phenomenon and a human tool, used,for example, to clear and maintain open agro-pastoral areas since at least the Early Nicolithic [93]. Charcoal count and shape are needed on continuous sediment series in order to reconstruct fire signal. The quantification of fire frequency from sedimentary macrocharcoal is a relevant method used to study human impact on ecosystems throughout the Holocene; however, this method appears to be spatiotemporally limited [93]. Microcharcoals are generally studied at the same time as pollen identification.