Landscape and Land Use in Postglacial Greece.

Kardulias, P. Nick

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 ca. 1000 B.C., and that their impact fluctuated thereafter. He argues that in politically unstable times, people moved into the mountains and had significant impact on the forests; these woodlands regenerated when people returned to the valleys in quiescent periods. There is a problem, however, in suggesting that occupation of the mountains increased due to incursions of outsiders. Expansion may also have occurred due to better conditions in which resident population increased and required more land to exploit. It seems that one needs to balance the mountain pollen record with data from the lowlands to know what was truly happening.

Ntinou and Badal's (chapter 3) examination of pollen and charcoal from several Macedonian sites confirms the assertion that people had only a minor effect on local environments during the Neolithic. Moody makes a good case in chapter 4 for the need to study oscillations in climate during the Holocene. Using the Medieval Little Ice Age as one well-documented example, she claims that flood deposits from the Minoan period reflect a similar period of catastrophic events. She argues that the unpredictable agricultural conditions that would have accompanied these shifts led to the emergence of palace storage as a coping strategy. This interpretation is based on relatively thin flood and pollen data, but does offer an interesting avenue for further research. Based on the evidence for the adaptability of plants to a wide range of moisture and soils, Atherden challenges the idea that modern conditions reflect an environment damaged by millennia of mismanagement. Using pollen as a barometer of grazing and burning in the past, she suggests that highland areas of Crete witnessed low human occupation and use in Roman times, and significant grazing ca. A.D. 1000 and into the Venetian and Early Turkish periods. She notes an inverse relationship between grazing on the one hand, and burning and woodcutting on the other.

In chapter 6, Frederick and Krahtopoulou examine agricultural terraces and how their construction and maintenance (or lack thereof) affects the collection and interpretation of archaeological survey data. They provide an excellent discussion of how and why people build different types of terraces, and the ways in which these factors effect terrace stratigraphy and the visibility of artifacts. The essay provides a clear typology and suggestions for dating terraces. In debunking Hardin's "tragedy of the commons" model, which asserts that communal pastures are overexploited because each herder will seek to take maximum advantage of this land, Forbes (chapter 7) presents evidence from historical sources and government statistics concerning the southern Argolid. He demonstrates convincingly that over the past 300 years the area was not overexploited or overgrazed. Indeed, the evidence clearly indicates that pastoralists employed a long-term strategy to preserve the environment. In chapter 8, Halstead notes, as do other contributors, the difficulty of distinguishing between natural and human effect on the environment. In an interesting theoretical discussion, he states there are two basic models for Mediterranean land use, one that is extensive with considerable specialization, and the other that is intensive and exhibits considerable diversity of activities; the former is more likely to be visible in the palaeoecological data. Halstead argues that most people in the Neolithic and Bronze Age practiced "small-scale, intensive husbandry" (p. 116). Bogaard, Charles, Halstead, and Jones provide a glimpse at another method of determining the nature of ancient agriculture; they argue that there is a systematic co-occurrence of cultivated plants and weeds (e.g., Secalinetea commonly appear in winter cereals fields). From two field studies, they conclude that extensive cultivation leaves a greater imprint in pollen and sediments.

Whitelaw (chapter 10) investigates the nature of the relationship between unstable settlement patterns and landscape degradation. In a fine use of data from a variety of excavations and surveys in southern Greece, he argues that different local conditions can lead to similar end results (nucleation in the late third millennium B.C.). He also points out that settlement instability occurs in locales with thin soils and unstable slopes; the environmental problems lead to local crises that shifting settlements reflect. In the final chapter, Mee and James pose the question of how to locate and comprehend small rural sites. For the Laconia survey, they studied the types and quantity of various elements in soil samples, from which information they inferred site function. The surface artifacts and geophysical anomalies supported these interpretations.

The authors have put together a useful collection of articles that demonstrate the sophistication of landscape studies in the Aegean. There is generally a good balance between presentation of theory and method on the one hand, and case studies on the other, although a few papers fall short of complete presentation. In style and format, the book is well produced, but there are a few typographical errors and the print is faded on a number of pages. Figures and tables are all clear and sharp. The lack of an index is a problem, but this is still a good reference source. While it is specialized, its shortness and concise discussions would make this book a very good secondary text for intermediate and advanced undergraduate classes and graduate seminars.

P. NICK KARDULIAS

COLLEGE OF WOOSTER