Agricultural terraces in the Mediterranean: medieval intensification revealed by OSL profiling and dating

Turner, Sam; Kinnaird, Tim; Varinlioğlu, Günder; Şerifoğlu, Tevfik Emre; Koparal, Elif; Demirciler, Volkan; Athanasoulis, Dimitris; Ødegård, Knut; Crow, James; Jackson, Mark; Bolòs, Jordi; Pardo, José Carlos Sánchez; Carrer, Francesco; Sanderson, David; Turner, Alex

doi:10.15184/aqy.2020.187

Cited by 39 publications

(40 citation statements)

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“…The evidence from both Naxos and Çeşme showed some terraces of different types were being built and used in the early Middle Ages (c. 600-900 CE), followed by more concerted episodes of construction in the later Medieval period (c. 1000-1600 CE). In both case-study areas, the terrace soils continued to be cultivated into the post-medieval era, indicating that the systems had an active life-span of more than a millennium (Turner et al 2021).The results chime with recent synthesis of palaeoenvironmental research which suggests that although land-use declined following late Antiquity the impact on settlement patterns (Roberts et al 2018) and soil erosion ( Roberts et al 2019) in the Aegean and southern Turkey may not have been as extreme as once thought. Direct evidence for the failure of agricultural systems here in the Middle Ages remains elusive, and it seems likely that terraces provided flexible and reliable strategies throughout the period.…”

Section: Agricultural Terraces In the Aegeansupporting

confidence: 55%

“…A third location was sampled on the northern edge of the Barbaros-Çiftlik plain, where a Classical farmstead had been identified through field survey. OSL profiling beneath a field wall on a low earthwork at this site showed the soils had accumulated from the later Middle Ages onwards (1340 ± 140 CE), until the field wall was built in the eighteenth century (Turner et al 2021). Overall the results show that terraces were being built with different morphologies in this fairly small area throughout the Middle Ages and that they continued to be used into the post-Medieval period.…”

Section: Agricultural Terraces In the Aegeanmentioning

confidence: 80%

“…Twelve individual terraces were sampled in order to characterize the chronology of the whole system in detail. The results suggested that the system had a long history including subdivisions and reorganizations, but that despite the date of the adjacent settlement, the principal period of use extended from the eleventh to the ninteenth centuries CE (Turner et al 2021).…”

Section: Agricultural Terraces In the Aegeanmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It uses portable optically-stimulated luminescence (OSL) equipment, coupled with gamma dosimetry, to contextualize soil-sediment stratigraphies on-site and relate them directly to the associated terraces. Pilot studies in the Aegean region on the Urla-Çeşme peninsula (Izmir, Turkey) and on the island of Naxos (Cyclades, Greece) have demonstrated this to be an efficient, cost-effective and minimally-intrusive technique for dating complete sediment profiles (Kinnaird et al 2017;Turner et al 2021). Detailed study of the formation sequences of terrace systems from both these areas shows that terraces provided an appropriate technology for land-use that endured over many centuries.…”

Section: Agricultural Terraces In the Aegeanmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Landscape archaeology, sustainability and the necessity of change

et al. 2020

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For future landscapes to be sustainable, significant changes in land-use and management practices will be needed. This article argues that landscape archaeology can make distinctive contributions to sustainability in two ways: firstly, by researching what were and were not sustainable ways of life in the past, and secondly by using this knowledge to explain how landscapes of the past differed to those in the present, and in doing so to disrupt the invented connections between past societies, tradition, heritage and conservation. The article draws on three case-studies in China, the Mediterranean and the UK to suggest that archaeological knowledge could be used to help stakeholders imagine future landscapes which are better and more sustainable than those of today. To succeed archaeologists will need to make deeper commitments to transdisciplinary work.

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Section: Agricultural Terraces In the Aegeansupporting

confidence: 55%

Section: Agricultural Terraces In the Aegeanmentioning

confidence: 80%

Section: Agricultural Terraces In the Aegeanmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Agricultural Terraces In the Aegeanmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Landscape archaeology, sustainability and the necessity of change

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“…They are present in Asia 51 , South America 52 , Central and North America 53 , and the mountainous regions of Africa 54 and the Near East 32 . In Europe, terraced fields are located mainly in the Mediterranean area 33 , 55 , in the Alpine region 56 , and in Central Europe 15 , 53 . There are several types of terraces, but all are built with two elements—the terraced platform and the terraced slope.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecological and historical factors behind the spatial structure of the historical field patterns in the Czech Republic

Fanta

Beneš²,

Zouhar

et al. 2022

Sci Rep

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Historical field systems are an essential part of the traditional cultural landscape of societies with primarily agricultural subsistence. They embody many functions and values, as they affect the productional, ecological and hydrological functioning of the landscape, its cultural values, the way people perceive the landscape, and their impact on present-day farming. As an aspect of the historical landscape, field systems are a topic investigated in landscape archaeology, environmental studies, historical geography, landscape ecology, and related disciplines. Historical field systems can form many complex spatial structures, shapes and patterns. This paper focuses on identifying environmental and historical/cultural driving forces during the formation and the historical development of various field pattern types. We worked with 523 settlements established in the medieval to the early modern period (approx. 900–1600 AD) in the present-day Czech Republic. We have determined the proportions of different field pattern types in the examined cadastres and have statistically compared them with a variety of environmental and geographical predictors. Our results indicate a strong influence of environmental predictors (terrain undulation, cadastre size), the impact of specific historical events and associated social changes (e.g. land confiscations by the state in the seventeenth century), and a significant relationship between field pattern types and settlement layout types. Furthermore, we have observed the different adaptations of field pattern types to similar environmental conditions, as well as the impact of social and political factors on the processes of landscape formation. Our paper provides the first detailed analysis of the geographical distribution of traditional field systems on the scale of an entire modern state, and emphasizes the importance of transdisciplinary research on cultural landscapes.

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Intensively Cultivated Roman Villae Estates: Case Study of Medulin Bay (Istria, Croatia)

Doneus,

Doneus

2024

Archaeological Prospection

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Our image of the Roman landscape of Istria is characterised by large‐scale centuriation and architectural remains of Roman villae. Detection and mapping of other, less dramatic landscape features require systematic large‐scale prospection, but this faces significant difficulties in the Mediterranean environment. However, the developments in the field of airborne laser scanning offer the possibility to create archaeologically usable digital terrain models under water and under very dense and low maquis vegetation. This paper reports on the use of terrain models created using a green laser and a sophisticated archaeologically driven ground point filtering strategy. Combined with archaeological aerial photo interpretation, this provides the means for landscape mapping and interpretation that has revealed a wealth of archaeological structures hinting at Roman agricultural practices and landscape. Our case study is based on a laser scan of about 24 km2 of land and underwater terrain in Medulin Bay. Processed, visualised and interpreted for archaeological purposes, the data reveal not only features ranging from prehistoric hilltop settlements to modern military installations but also features a complex picture of the Roman land use. Of particular interest is the large number of planting pits, which extend over a total length of 4 km. They were laid on a regular grid of approximately 35 × 35 m, sometimes combined in contiguous parcels. They can be interpreted as remains of orchards or tree nurseries of Roman date, and the paper examines also the question of whether they can be linked to the associated Roman estates. The case study area presented here shows that the potential of remote sensing methods goes far beyond the mere finding of traditional sites but can open up new landscape‐scale perspectives on regions that have been archaeologically little explored.

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Agricultural terraces in the Mediterranean: medieval intensification revealed by OSL profiling and dating

Cited by 39 publications

References 39 publications

Landscape archaeology, sustainability and the necessity of change

Landscape archaeology, sustainability and the necessity of change

Ecological and historical factors behind the spatial structure of the historical field patterns in the Czech Republic

Intensively Cultivated Roman Villae Estates: Case Study of Medulin Bay (Istria, Croatia)

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