Prehistoric and Historic Landscape Change in Aragón, Spain

Abstract

The Moncayo Archaeological Survey (MAS) was initiated in 2000 to investigate population, economic and environmental change in a study area northwest of Zaragoza in the northeast of Spain. This is an interdisciplinary project which combines landscape archaeology with earth-science methodologies and approaches. Research undertaken during the first four field seasons has concentrated on reconstructing and explaining landscape change, while at the same time cataloguing existing archaeological records and prospecting for previously unknown sites. Two episodes of significant landscape change dating to the Neolithic/Bronze Age and post-medieval period have been identified from the geomorphological record. These are interpreted here as the result of human land-use change: in the prehistoric period from clearance of woodland during the Neolithic and the subsequent expansion of agriculture in the Bronze Age, and in the 19th century from the removal of upland woodland following changes in land ownership and management. Notably, evidence for erosion and deposition was not found for either the Roman or medieval periods when archaeological and historical evidence indicate that local population was at its highest and agriculture at its most intense, nor from the height of the Little Ice Age when climate is thought to have been at its most extreme. Therefore, direct relationships between the intensity of agriculture or climate change and landscape modification are rejected here in favour of a more complex interaction of multiple human and climatic variables. These can only be understood by a combination of high-resolution archaeological survey, geoarchaeological study and chronometric dating.

Luminescence dating of irrigation systems: Application to a qanat in Aragón, Spain

“…The geology of the area is ideal for sourcing and managing water supplies, with soft Tertiary marls and gypsums that facilitated the excavation of tunnels and shafts for accessing the aquifer. The Bureta qanat is a unique irrigation feature in the Huecha Valley (Gerrard, 2011), where a complex network of dams, channels, storage ponds, and watermills of different periods have been identified and documented, all of which have been adapted to the terrain and geomorphology, but also evolved as a response to climate change (e.g., Little Ice Age; Burillo et al, 1986;Gutiérrez and Peña 1998;Peña et al, 2000), and land-use and landscape management change, as gleaned from sedimentary records (Wilkinson et al, 2005). Although irrigation networks within the Huecha Valley are well documented for the medieval and post-medieval period (Gerrard, 2011), there is no documentary reference to the construction of the Bureta qanat and, on the basis of the adoption of an Islamic hydraulic technology, it is assumed to be associated with the availability of such expertise after the 8 th century AD.…”

Landscape Archaeology between Art and Science : From a Multi- to an Interdisciplinary Approach

“…Although this kind of work has ample precedent in other areas of the Mediterranean (see seminal references like the work by Vita-Finzi 1969), in the Iberian Peninsula the evolution of fluvial environments is an issue which is not often considered. As an exception we can quote the wide scientific literature on the geoarchaeological interpretation of some areas in the Peninsular hinterland like Aragon, where an arid environment has produced intense erosion processes dramatically affecting land use and preservation of archaeological sites (Wilkinson et al 2005). There is also remarkable scientific work focused on the reconstruction of the shoreline and geomorphological changes on the coast of the south of Spain (see for example the results of interdisciplinary projects like Arteaga & Hoffman 1999) and many specific studies of coastal sectors like the Cadiz Bay (Alonso et al 2003;Borja et al 1999;Dabrio et al 2000).…”

Contest and co-operation: strategies for medieval and later irrigation along the upper Huecha valley, Aragón, north-east Spain

“…The specific detail offered here derives from an ongoing landscape archaeology project underway to the north-east of Zaragoza which is investigating population, economic and environmental change over the long term (Wilkinson et al 2005). This project sets out to build upon recent studies which are exposing a wealth of new evidence about human adaptions to arid-zone environments (e.g.…”