![]() From about the 3rd century BC to 3rd century AD, soil erosion is evident in the southern Argolid and probably the Thessalian plain and is indicated in the literature elsewhere in Greece, such as Elis, Euboea and the area of Olympia. In three regions, major erosion and valley alluviation occurred about 1000 years after the onset of widespread Neolithic land use the date depends on the time large scale Neolithic land clearing began. Comparison of the three data sets and the literature indicates a single, early ubiquitous event, followed by marked regional differences, but leaves little doubt that the cause of soil erosion since the middle Holocene has been human activity. Here we summarize the results of three major regional studies (southern Argolid, Thessaly, Plain of Argos) of this subject in selected areas of Greece. Vita-Finzi’s model for the late Quaternary history of stream erosion and alluviation in the Mediterranean presented in 1969 has greatly influenced views on prehistoric human land use in Greece. If there were any prehistoric sites in the plain, they would now be buried by up to 3 m of silt. A further depositional phase occurred after the Hellenistic. This lagoon was later filled in completely thereby providing the arable land, which constitutes today’s coastal plain. In the Early Bronze Age, extensive soil erosion on the surrounding hills provided the sediment, which eventually turned the marine inlet into a lagoon. Hence, the hillock of Asine used to be an island during the Neolithic, i.e. These cores yielded up to 6 m thick subaqueous deposits which are buried under Early Bronze Age and post-Hellenistic alluvium. Fifteen auger cores to a maximum depth of 9.5 m were taken from Holocene deposits around Asine and three power holes were drilled to a maximum depth of 21 m. The geoarchaeological coring campaign discussed here aimed at reconstructing past environmental changes at Asine and at determining interrelations between the evolution of the landscape and human land use. Many Mycenaean chamber tombs and largely preserved Hellenistic fortification walls may indicate a naval installation of regional importance during the Late Bronze Age and Hellenistic. It is suggested that the discontinuous and highly variable low-density distribution of artifacts in our area results from past human activity such as land clearance and agriculture, pastoralism, dumping, manuring and artifact loss rather than from geomorphological processes.Īncient Asine consists of Early Helladic to Roman building remains set on a precipitous limestone hillock, 350 m by 140 m in size, in the southeast comer of the Argive Plain (Peloponnese, Greece). Trade and pastoralism attracted people to the Miyio valley northeast of Limnes in Final Neolithic/Early Helladic and Mycenaean times, while in Middle Helladic, Late Geometric and Classical to Roman times, arable soils in the lower Berbati valley were preferred. Within the geological framework economic and political factors governed the settlement pattern. Thus architectural remains such as the Mycenaean road are only preserved on the hard limestone, whereas the softer rocks such as marl and flysch, once stripped of their soil cover, have lost their archaeological record. The 1988 field season demonstrated that site location, preservation of monuments and artifacts as well as land use are dependent upon the geological setting. The palynological evidence by itself argues unequivocally for a strong human impact on the natural vegetation ultimately resulting in large-scale soil erosion. A pollen diagram from the coastal swamps near Lerna records a drastic decline of the formerly dense oak forests in favor of Hornbeam (Carpinus) and evergreen shrubs and trees which coincided with the population increase at 4000-3000 BCE. Subsequently, during Early Helladic II, it soared even more dramatically. By the Final Neolithic/Early Bronze Age transition their number had increased by a factor of five. ![]() The first seeds of agricultural communities arose in the Argive hinterland during the Middle Neolithic. ![]() New data from the Berbati-Limnes area provide striking evidence in support of a human cause of prehistoric deforestation and soil erosion at the Neolithic/Early Bronze Age transition. Later soil erosion occurred with increasing frequency and decreasing magnitude, since most fragile soil had already been washed away. Furthermore, human clearance of the natural vegetation on slopes, accompanying the introduction of widespread agriculture, appears as the most likely cause of the first landscape instability. Regardless of the area of observation, the earliest Holocene phase of soil instability has been most significant with respect to the quantity of moved material. The first post-glacial events of soil erosion occurred time-transgressively in different parts of Greece.
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