## 3 Coastal Georadneaology of the Largest Mediterranean Islands: A Brief Overview and Main Highlights
### Western Mediterranean (Balearic Islands and Sardinia-Corsica)
On this point, archaeological information is scarce at a within-site scale, and the few sites dated from Early Neolithic times only hint at traces of agriculture. One of the challenges facing coastal geoarchaeology in Sardinia-Corsica is to elucidate major questions related to the spread of agriculture between the two islands (across the Bonifacio Strait), where archaeology reveals limited information: the aim of the palaeoenvironmentalist is thus to improve this knowledge and provide precious information for archaeologists, prehistorians and anthropologists. Most of Sardinia's coastal wetlands formed due to the post-glacial sea-level rise slowdown and the associated deltaic progradation. Brackish sediments contributed to the good preservation of pollen and fossil Non-Pollen Palynomorph (NPP; [68]), which help to evaluate land use, cereal cultivation and pastoralism in particular. Holocene landscape reconstruction of the deltaic plains of La Posada (north-east Sardinia) and Tirco (west central Sardinia), and the coastal brackish lake of Sa Curcurica (NE Sardinia) have helped to evaluate shoreline displacements and provide, in addition, the first convincing sign of anthropization in a coastal environment detected using pollen investigation. Evidence for Cerealia-type cultivation is recorded in most of the sites during Early Neolithic times and possibly at the beginning of the Cardial culture, dated ca. 5500 cal. BCE, at the site of La Posada [66]. At the Tirco and Sa Curcurica sites, clear evidence for agriculture is dated later. Concerning the Corsican shoreline, this region remained little investigated in palaeoeecological terms until the 2010s, and the only studies conducted by [PERSON] in the 1980s showed no robust chronostragraphy [69], which thus strongly limits the archaeological implications. It was only very recently that cores revealing robust chronostragraphy [70; 71] were drilled in coastal wetlands of the island. Pollen investigations could then be discussed in terms of human activities at a high-resolution level. A great number of sites in the south-ermmost part of Corsica date from Mesolithic to Early Neolithic times [72]. However, few details are known regarding Human-Environment interactions. At Piantarella (situated 5 km SE of the modern town of Bonifacio), a lagoon that formed approximately 7700 years ago revealed pollen that was well preserved for the whole Neolithic sequence [71]. Currently, no site dated from this last period has been identified around the wetland. The first signs of agriculture are evidenced at ca. 5450 cal. BCE with the development of pastoralism (identification of NPPs) within a deforestation context (a strong decrease in Erica taxon that formed the original coastal vegetation of the island), and approximately one century later, cereal cultivation can be observed (Cerealia-type). The palaeenvironmental results clearly evidence human occupation in an area where archaeological information is lacking. Coastal geoarchaeology in the case of Sardinia-Corsica helps to better define land-use practices related to the first stages of the Early Neolithic period and contributes to a better understanding of the spread of agriculture across the Mediterranean via the islands. Materials and Methods Used to Reconstruct Past Human-Environment Interactions within the Context of Coastal Wetlands of Corsica  
Corsica is the fourth largest Mediterranean island and counts approximately two hundred coastal wetlands (Figure 2a,b), which mainly formed during the last six millennia due to the post-glacial sea level rise slowdown [73; 74]. Some of these formed due to the deltaic progradation of the main rivers of the island, while others were the result of a combination of particular coastal configuration and Holocene spatial redistribution of sediments by the sea parallel to the palaeoshore (isolation of marine to brackish waters behind a natural barrier).