Collaboration between prehistorians and palaeoecologists is radically changing our understanding of the relationship between landscape, land use and human settlement in Greece. The chapters in this volume include case studies and broader syntheses, developments of both on-site and off-site field methodology, explorations of palaeoecological and archaeological evidence, and discussions of how the palaeoecological and archaeological records are formed. Contributions range geographically over the contrasting natural and cultural landscapes of northern and southern Greece and the lowlands and highlands, and chronologically over the whole postglacial period, including studies of plant and animal ecology and of palaeoecological formation processes in the present. The difficulty of disentangling climatic and anthropogenic causes of palaeoecological change is a recurrent theme.
Author(s): Paul Halstead, Charles Frederick
Publisher: Sheffield Academic Press
Year: 2000
Language: English
Pages: 176
Contents......Page 6
Abbreviations......Page 8
Preface......Page 10
List of Contributors......Page 14
1. Holocene Alluvial History of Northern Pieria, Macedonia, Greece......Page 16
2. Palynological Evidence for Human Influence on the Vegetation of Mountain Regions in Northern Greece: The Case of Lailias, Serres......Page 29
3. Local Vegetation and Charcoal Analysis: An Example from Two Late Neolithic Sites in Northern Greece......Page 39
4. Holocene Climate Change in Crete: An Archaeologist's View......Page 53
5. Human Impact on the Vegetation of Southern Greece and Problems of Palynological Interpretation: A Case Study from Crete......Page 63
6. Deconstructing Agricultural Terraces: Examining the Influence of Construction Method on Stratigraphy, Dating and Archaeological Visibility......Page 80
7. Landscape Exploitation via Pastoralism: Examining the 'Landscape Degradation' versus Sustainable Economy Debate in the Post-Mediaeval Southern Argolid......Page 96
8. Land Use in Postglacial Greece: Cultural Causes and Environmental Effects......Page 111
9. The Scale and Intensity of Cultivation: Evidence from Weed Ecology......Page 130
10. Settlement Instability and Landscape Degradation in the Southern Aegean in the Third Millennium BC......Page 136
11. Soils and Site Function: The Laconia Rural Sites Project......Page 163
