## 3 Coastal Georadneaology of the Largest Mediterranean Islands: A Brief Overview and Main Highlights
### Western Mediterranean (Balearic Islands and Sardinia-Corsica)  
The Western Mediterranean reports the most in-depth research dedicated to coastal geoarchaeology, even though the islands situated on the northern coast of Africa (mainly located a short distance from Tunisia) and the Tuscan archipelago remain little studied. One reason for such developed multidisciplinary research can be explained by the presence on the largest islands of a great number of coastal wetlands, which have been investigated simultaneously by both archaeologists and geoscientists. Based on archaeological evidence, the Balearic Islands were colonized around the mid-3 rd millennium BCE [60; 61; 62] by human groups probably originating from what is today Catalunya [63]. No evidence of Neolithic culture has been recognized in the Gymnesic nor in the Pythusian islands, creating a unique situation from a geoarchaeologicalperspective for the entire Mediterranean. It is also noteworthy that the Balearic Islands are one of the most widely dated regions in Europe, totalling about 750 radiocarbon dates for 118 sites [64]. Thus, this area of the Mediterranean can be said to provide a great opportunity to reconstruct, within a precisely dated archaeological framework, the landscape configuration prior to human occupation and to compare the situation during the period of the anthropization of the archipelago. The numerous lagoons and coastal ponds located on Majorca, Minorca, Ibiza and Formentera, offer a unique opportunity to reconstruct and compare, from island to island, past Human-Environment interactions during the late Holocene. These comparisons are based on the use of palaeoecological multiproxies (in particular, pollen identification) derived from borehole studies. In addition, the pre-anthropic environments have also been reconstructed (representing the lowermost part of the sedimentary sequence) and help to clearly reveal climate control on vegetation composition, as well as to evaluate the later effects of human disturbance on these environments. Thus, geoarchaeology is a convincing approach to evaluate, at a regional scale and from a short- to long-term perspective, present-day questions related to the origins of global environmental changes caused by both natural and anthropogenic factors. In their concise analysis of the vegetation history of the Balearic Islands, [PERSON] et al. [61] not only focused on the main changes in terms of vegetation cover caused by either climatic forcing (for the pre- anthropic period) or by a mixture of climatic and anthropogenic origins (since the mid-3 rd mill. BCE), but the authors also evaluated the evolution of land-use and the development of agricultural practices as indicators of changes relating to human occupation dynamics. To summarize, geoarchaeological research conducted in the coastal wetlands of the Balearic Islands is relevant for the better understanding of complex environmental adaptations of landscapes to both natural and anthropogenic forcings from short- to long-term perspectives, and these studies can also be of great help in comparing pre- and post-industrial situations. Finally, preservation of coastal wetlands in the context of rapid urbanization in the Balearic Islands is crucial, both for present-day ecological studies and in the context of palaeoenvironmental/geoarchaeological interests. Sardinia and Corsica are thought to be highly connected from an archaeological point of view as they formed a single island during the Last Glacial Maximum [16]. One aspect of geoarchaeological research concerns the appearance and spread of agriculture, possibly from Sardinia to Corsica at the beginning of the Cardinal Neolithic culture. Over the last decade, coastal wetlands (lagoons, ponds and lakes) of Sardinia, the second-largest Mediterranean island, have been investigated to reconstruct a complete history of the landscape changes, from both palaeogeographical and palaeoecological perspectives [65; 66; 67].