Landscape and Land Use in Postglacial Greece.

AuthorKardulias, P. Nick
PositionReviews of Books - Book Review

Landscape and Land Use in Postglacial Greece. Edited by PAUL HALSTEAD and CHARLES FREDERICK. Sheffield Studies in Aegean Archaeology, vol. 3. Sheffield: SHEFFIELD ACADEMIC PRESS, 2000. Pp. 175, illus. $21.50 (paper).

As the outgrowth of a round-table on Aegean archaeology at Sheffield University in 1999, this edited volume presents a group of papers that reflect some current thinking on the complex, mutual interaction between humans and the environment. The contributors demonstrate both the quality of palaeoecological studies undertaken in Greece over the past two decades and the value of interdisciplinary research. Implied throughout is the need to be wary of, if not dispense with, general models that do not deal adequately with local variation in environmental conditions. As the editors note in the brief preface, landscape, land use, and settlement are linked elements; the problem is figuring out the degree to which climate or human action have been responsible for alterations in the terrain. In addressing this issue, the authors employ palaeoecological, archaeological, historical, ethnographic, and ethnoarchaeological approaches. This methodological collage serves the general goal well.

The eleven chapters deal with ecological reconstruction (chapters 1-4), patterns of human land use (chapters 5-9), and settlement distribution (chapters 10-11), although most of the authors deal with more than one of these issues to some extent. Geographically, the eight case studies deal with Macedonia, Crete, and the Peloponnesos, while the three comparative studies engage issues at a more general level. An introductory or concluding chapter that discussed these topics in a more fully integrated manner would have helped tie the volume together and make a more distinct assessment.

In the initial chapter Krahtopoulou discusses the development of two adjacent river valleys in Macedonia since the Neolithic. Based on geoarchaeological work, she disputes van Andel's contention that farming initiated massive erosion at the Neolithic-Bronze Age divide. It is only in the last two millennia that human activity has contributed significantly to destabilization of slopes. Gerasimidis' palynological research indicates that people had a much greater impact on mountain forests in northern as opposed to southern Greece in prehistory. The arboreal to non-arboreal pollen ratios suggest that people had little effect (and probably minimal presence) on mountain forests until...

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