Characterizing the Historic Landscapes of Naxos

Abstract

Historic Landscape Characterization (HLC) is a methodology for historic landscape studies pioneered inBritain. Using satellite imagery and RAF archival air photographs, Naxos provides an excellent pilot study to explore the application of this technique to the historic landscapes of the eastern Mediterranean. Our research identifies a number of discrete HLC types and considers their development from the Byzantine period to modern times. In addition it has been possible to tise these data to set Naxos' rich corpus of Byzantine churches in their landscape context, providing amove textured account of rural life in medieval and post-medieval times.

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

“…Retrogressive analysis as part of GIS-based landscape studies can reveal the sequential relationships between landscape features, suggesting the order in which earthworks developed. Such methods, however, only allow construction of relative chronologies, as opposed to providing absolute dates (Crow et al 2011). Radiocarbon methods can be applied to buried soils, and Bayesian modelling has been used to refine the interpretation of radiocarbon results for terraces (Acabado 2009).…”

Landscape archaeology, sustainability and the necessity of change

“…Datable finds are frequently absent from terrace soils and references in ancient texts tend to be rare. Retrogressive analysis can only provide relative chronologies (Crow et al 2011), and absolute scientific dates have generally been expensive, unreliable and hard to interpret (Puy et al 2016;Kinnaird et al 2017;Ferro-Vázquez et al 2019;Porat et al 2018). In the Aegean region these dating problems have significantly limited evaluation of terracing in the past.…”

Central Place Theory Reloaded and Revised: Political Economy and Landscape Dynamics in the Longue Durée

“…Churches of the period of Latin domination in the 13th-15th centuries AD, located in close proximity to arable fields belonging to small landowners, have also been seen as markers of important resources and property ownership or as entry points to geographical units, like the cases discussed by Lucia Nixon [143] (pp. [23][24][25][26] in Crete, or Jim Crow and his collaborators [144] (pp. 130-132) in Naxos.…”