Prehistoric & colonial landscapes across the Mediterranean

Previous research on palaeolandscapes has overlooked a main driver of landscape change: the mobility of human societies.

When groups move they take with them their technology and ideas, but also plants, or land-uses which merge with native environments and practices to give birth to transported landscapes.

This can lead to significant and long-lasting landscape changes -i.e. deforestation, introduction of exotic plants, erosion- that can be traced back through the use of combined palaeoenvironmental and archaeological techniques.

However, the study of transported landscapes and their environmental impact has only rarely been addressed so far, and it is especially needed in Mediterranean coastal areas where migratory and colonial processes have had a particularly active role in the modelling of landscapes for millennia.

ACROSS will fill this existing gap in current research by analysing two areas at the two sides of the Mediterranean Basin: Abdera (Thrace) and Emporion (Catalonia).

They account for a long history of prehistoric peopling, and have ancient colonial relationships with the foundation of the Greek colonies of Abdera and of Emporion by same cultural group, the Ionian tribe.

An innovative approach combining multi-proxy palaeoecological analyses (pollen, non-pollen palynomorphs, plant macroremains, high-temporal fire reconstructions), and Landscape Archaeology datasets will be applied in both areas to reconstruct changes in vegetation, land-uses and landscapes following prehistoric migratory processes and colonial settling between the 6th millennia cal BC and the 4th century AD.

A particular focus will be put in reconstructing landscape changes following Graeco-Roman colonial settling to assess 1) common and diverging trends in land-use and landscape shaping in culturally similar colonial landscapes over long distances, and 2) the interaction, integration and resilience of autochthonous and colonial practices and landscapes across the Mediterranean.