Landscape capital and fragile communities

Aims and Objectives

A characteristic feature of many Mediterranean landscapes is their often complex and extensive systems of fields, trackways and terraces, but the relationship between these agricultural structures and the social context in which they emerge is not clearly understood. The main question that will be addressed is whether the construction of terraces and associated structures is directly correlated with periods of dramatic population growth which makes it necessary to invest more intensively in less-productive parts of landscape, or whether terraces emerge over a longer time-span, more organically and represent a potential causal factor of demographic growth rather than an effect.

For more details please go to the project summary document

 

Progress and Highlights

Our work so far has produced a range of exciting results, including:
• A complete, high resolution mapping of the ca.12,000 terraces on the island (as vector polylines). To our knowledge this is the only accurate dataset of its kind to cover a complete island or other bounded region in the Mediterranean.
• Pioneering use of a set of wartime aerial photographs from 1944 (the last time the island was properly under crop) to map agricultural structures, and compare them to modern Quickbird satellite imagery for insights into changing land use and the recolonisation of abandoned fields by vegetation.
• Evidence for multiple phases of terracing in different parts of Antikythera, including highly probable Late Roman and Middle Byzantine structures, as well as more circumstantial evidence for even earlier Bronze Age components.
• Sampling, geo-chemical profiling and infiltration testing of soil deposits at 100 locations across the island. Secondary samples were collected and archived to build a control dataset for phytolith study
• The creation of key digital datasets for further statistical analysis of terrace locations, including a) a detailed mapping of the island’s structural geology at ca. 1:10,000, b) a 10m resolution digital elevation model, c) supervised reclassification of satellite imagery for modern vegetation patches, and d) advanced erosion modelling.
• Recording and transcription of a full-set of interviews with the remaining permanent inhabitants of the island about past land use and terracing strategies. These provide important details on local strategies for terrace maintenance in the earlier 20th century, but also suggest a strong local concept of terraces as 'an inherited landscape', from the early 19th century if not before.
• Recovery of important information from the UK National Archives on 19th century population, land use strategies, crop yields etc.
• Creation of a photo archive and species list of plants on both Antikythera and neighbouring Kythera for comparative purposes.
•Forging of collaborative links with Greek ecologists working on Kythera and Antikythera.
•Completion of the study of survey pottery which now allows us to produce a phased picture of human settlement and activity across the whole island, stretching back to at least the 5th millennium BC and up to the present day.
•Results from botanical survey that suggest a very clear chronological sequence (a succession) in the way local plant species recolonise abandoned fields, which might be used to date recent abandonment events in the absence of other evidence.

Final publication of these results is now well advanced. In the meantime, for a overview of our work investigations on the island, and access to digital datasets associated with this project, please go to http://www.ucl.ac.uk/asp/