Unlocking historic landscapes in the Eastern Mediterranean

Aims and Objectives

Byron's evocation of the 'Isles of Greece' in his epic poem Don Juan contrasted their plight under Ottoman oppression with the glories of an ancient Hellenic past. This perspective, partly derived from the study of the Classics, has determined how the landscapes of the Aegean and western Turkey have often been studied: as the settings for historical events rather than as a source for the lives and activities of past societies.

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Progress and Highlights

The historic landscapes of Naxos fulfilled expectations providing a rich and complex pattern of terraces, fields and pathways. Retrogressive analysis indicated that many of the terrace systems must date back to the medieval period, if not before, and associated with many of the terraces is a unique corpus of churches and chapels dating from late antiquity to the end of the middle ages. South of Chora (the island's main town in medieval and modern times) is an area of level, fertile soils divided by a sinuous pattern of tall, cane boundaries and hollow ways. Analysis revealed this to be a series of ‘great fields' subdivided over generations but probably representing the primary estates of the Venetian rulers of the island from 1204 onwards; evidence for a feudal past amongst the modern market gardens and potato fields for which Naxos is today renowned in the Archipelago.

In Thrace the pattern of the fields and boundaries reflected modern conditions and circumstances, and in places it was all too apparent where old lines had been ploughed out to create modern prairies. Yet amongst all this was clear evidence for complexity of both terraces and field system. Here it was more difficult to provide a reliable datum for the chronological development, although the satellite images did reveal ancient structures such as a Roman villa, burial mounds and sections of the Anastasian Wall. Particularly interesting was the diversity of field types associated with various modern-day villages indicating different crops and perhaps also signifying differing faith communities known to lived in this part of Thrace before the First World War.