Land Use and Soil Erosion in Prehistoric and Historical Greece

AbstractSoil erosion resulting from human exploitation of the land has attracted much public and scientific interest. Being regarded mainly as a modern phenomenon, however, its prehistoric and historical extent remain largely unexplored. Here we summarize three regional studies of Holocene erosion and alluviation in Greece, together with information derived from the literature, and conclude that most recorded Holocene soil erosion events are spatially and temporally related to human interference in the landscape. Wherever adequate evidence exists, a major phase of soil erosion appears to follow by 500–1000 years the introduction of farming in Greece, its age depending on when agriculture was introduced and ranging from the later Neolithic to the late Early Bronze Age. Later Bronze Age and historical soil erosion events are more scattered in time and space, but especially the thousand years after the middle of the 1st millennium B.C. saw serious, intermittent soil erosion in many places. With the exception...

[1]  J. Harden.  A quantitative index of soil development from field descriptions: Examples from a chronosequence in central California , 1982 .

[2]  Susan E. Alcock.  Roman imperialism in the Greek landscape , 1989, Journal of Roman Archaeology.

[3]  P. Birkeland,et al.  Soils and Geomorphology , 1984 .

[4]  L. Brown.  World population growth, soil erosion, and food security. , 1981, Science.

[5]  Stanley E. Aschenbrenner,et al.  Paleogeographic Reconstructions of Coastal Aegean Archaeological Sites , 1977, Science.

[6]  O. Dickinson.  PARALLELS and CONTRASTS IN the BRONZE AGE of the PELOPONNESE , 1982 .

[7]  J. Borchert.  THE DUST BOWL IN THE 1970s , 1971 .

[8]  D. Eisma.  Stream Deposition in the Mediterranean Area in Historical Times , 1964, Nature.

[9]  V. Hankey,et al.  A Gazetteer of Aegean Civilisation in the Bronze Age. 1. The Mainland and the Islands , 1980 .

[10]  J. Dufaure.  La terrasse holocène d'Olympie et ses équivalents méditerranéens , 1976 .

[11]  C. N. Raphael.  LATE QUATERNARY CHANGES IN COASTAL ELIS, GREECE* , 1973 .

[12]  H. Forbes,et al.  FIRE, AXE, AND PLOW: HUMAN INFLUENCE ON LOCAL PLANT COMMUNITIES IN THE SOUTHERN ARGOLID , 1976 .

[13]  L. Hempel.  Jungquartäre Formungsprozesse in Südgriechenland und auf Kreta , 1982 .

[14]  R. Harrison.  Land-use and prehistory in south-east Spain . By Gilman A. and Thornes J. B.. London Research Series in Geography, No. 8. 217 pp. London, Allen and Unwin. Price £25.00. , 1985 .

[15]  Stanley E. Aschenbrenner,et al.  Late Holocene Paleogeography of the Coastal Plain of the Gulf of Messenia, Greece, and Its Relationships to Archaeological Settings and Coastal Change , 1975 .

[16]  Paul Halstead,et al.  Traditional and ancient rural economy in Mediterranean Europe: plus ça change? , 1987, The Journal of Hellenic Studies.

[17]  T. V. van Andel,et al.  High-Resolution Seismic Reflection Profiles for the Reconstruction of Postglacial Transgressive Shorelines: An example from Greece , 1984, Quaternary Research.

[18]  C. C. Watson,et al.  Incised Channels: Morphology, Dynamics, and Control , 1984 .

[19]  Tjeerd H. van Andel,et al.  Beyond the Acropolis: A Rural Greek Past , 1987 .

[20]  C. Vita-Finzi.  Changes in the Land. (Book Reviews: The Mediterranean Valleys. Geological Changes in Historical Times) , 1969 .

[21]  Stanley E. Aschenbrenner,et al.  Late Holocene palaeogeomorphic reconstructions in the area of the Bay of Navarino: Sandy Pylos , 1980 .

[22]  Zev Naveh,et al.  The Human Degradation of Mediterranean Landscapes in Israel , 1973 .

[23]  K. Butzer.  Holocene alluvial sequences: problems of dating and correlation. , 1980 .

[24]  Curtis N. Runnels,et al.  THE OLIVE IN THE PREHISTORIC AEGEAN: THE EVIDENCE FOR DOMESTICATION IN THE EARLY BRONZE AGE , 1986 .

[25]  J. Bintliff,et al.  Sediments and settlement in Southern Greece. , 1976 .

[26]  A. Philippson,et al.  Das Klima Griechenlands , 1950 .

[27]  C.C. Park.  Man, river systems and environmental impacts , 1981 .

[28]  K. Pope,et al.  Five Thousands Years of Land Use and Abuse in the Southern Argolid, Greece , 1986 .

[29]  P. C. Patton,et al.  Ephemeral-Stream Processes: Implications for Studies of Quaternary Valley Fills , 1981, Quaternary Research.

[30]  O. Rackham.  Observations on the Historical Ecology of Boeotia , 1983, The Annual of the British School at Athens.

[31]  K. Pope,et al.  Dating Middle Palaeolithic red beds in southern Greece , 1984, Nature.

[32]  J. Wagstaff.  Buried assumptions: Some problems in the interpretation of the “Younger Fill” raised by recent data from Greece , 1981 .

[33]  J. M. Balcer.  The Mycenaean Dam at Tiryns , 1974, American Journal of Archaeology.

[34]  Karl W. Butzer,et al.  Archaeology as human ecology : method and theory for a contextual approach , 1982 .

[35]  J. Bintliff.  The Plain of Western Macedonia and the Neolithic Site of Nea Nikomedeia , 1976, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society.

[36]  S. Schumm.  The Fluvial System , 1977 .

[37]  K. Pope,et al.  Late quaternary alluviation and soil formation in the southern Argolid: its history, causes and archaeological implications , 1984 .

[38]  Curtis N. Runnels,et al.  The Evolution of Settlement in the Southern Argolid, Greece: An Economic Explanation , 1987 .

[39]  T. A. Wertime.  The Furnace versus the Goat: The Pyrotechnologic Industries and Mediterranean Deforestation in Antiquity , 1983 .

[40]  O. Lancaster.  Classical Landscape With Figures , 1947 .

[41]  Curtis N. Runnels.  A Prehistoric Survey of Thessaly: New Light on the Greek Middle Paleolithic , 1988 .

[42]  J. Thirgood.  Man and the Mediterranean forest , 1981 .

[43]  Georges Daux.  48. Lehmann (Herbert). Argolis. Erater Band. Landeskunde der Ebene von Argos und ihren Randgebiete. Archäologisches Institut des deutschen Reiches, Athenische Abteilung. Athènes, Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, 1937 , 1939 .

[44]  T. Wijmstra.  PALYNOLOGY OF THE FIRST 30 METRES OF A 120 M DEEP SECTION IN NORTHERN GREECE , 1969 .

[45]  Paul Halstead,et al.  Bad Year Economics , 1989 .

[46]  William Cronon,et al.  Changes in the Land , 1983 .

[47]  P. Halstead.  Bad Year Economics: Cultural Responses to Risk and Uncertainty: The economy has a normal surplus: economic stability and social change among early farming communities of Thessaly, Greece , 1989 .

[48]  John Bintliff,et al.  The Cambridge/Bradford Boeotian Expedition: the First Four Years , 1985 .

[49]  P. Halstead,et al.  Strategies for survival : An ecological approach to social and economic change in the early farming communities of Thessaly, N. Greece , 1984 .

[50]  A. Aksu,et al.  Quaternary growth patterns of Byk menderes and Kk menderes deltas, western Turkey , 1987 .

[51]  T. W. Jacobsen.  17,000 Years of Greek Prehistory , 1976 .

[52]  M. Wolman.  A Cycle of Sedimentation and Erosion in Urban River Channels , 1967 .

[53]  S. Sutton,et al.  Landscape and People of the Franchthi Region , 1988 .

[54]  T. V. Andel,et al.  Prehistoric and historic shorelines of the Southern Argolid Peninsula: A subhottom profiler study , 1983 .

[55]  von H. Rohdenburg,et al.  Quartäre Klimazyklen Im Westlichen Mediterrangebiet Und Ihre Auswirkungen Auf Die Reliefund Bodenentwicklung , 1973 .

[56]  H. Schneider.  Zur quartärgeologischen Entwicklungsgeschichte Thessaliens (Griechenland) , 1968 .

[57]  C. Renfrew,et al.  The Emergence of Civilisation: The Cyclades and the Aegean in the Third Millennium B. C. , 1973 .

[58]  S. Judson.  Erosion of the land, or What's happening to our continents? , 1976 .