Abstract
Terraces are ubiquitous, in some ways defining, features of Mediterranean environments, yet their longer-term history and relationship to human populations and food economies are not well understood. This paper discusses a complete system of terraces across the small island of Antikythera, Greece. We bring together the evidence from archaeology, ethnography, archival history, botany and geoarchaeology, supported by direct dating of buried terrace soils, and consider terrace investment in relation to major episodes in the island’s punctuated history of human activity. This broad-spectrum approach leads to a range of interesting insights on the spatial structure of terraces, on the degree of correlation between terrace construction and changing human population, and on the implications of terrace abandonment for vegetation and soils.
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Notes
The yields were calculated from original records of the number of acres under different kinds of cereal crop and the overall number of bushels these produced. The ‘mixed cereals’ category reflects an undifferentiated grouping used in the Ionian state statistical returns for ‘Indian corn [maize], barley, calambochio and smigadi’. Smigado (a mix of wheat and barley produced by inter-cropping) is a well-known strategy for ensuring a baseline harvest in this region particularly in what are perceived as marginal areas. The relative importance of maize is less clear, with contrasting suggestions that it was both common and rare on Kythera and Antikythera at different times (Jameson 1836: 276; Leontsinis 1987: 233–5).
Comparing yield figures can be problematic, but as a very rough guide, average wheat-only yields in tons/ha for Antikythera in 1826–39 and 1840–47 were 0.44, and 0.33, compared to Kythera (1826–39, 1840–47): 0.55, 0.55; and Greece (1860, 1887, 1914, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s): 0.89, 0.91, 0.75, 1.56, 2.22, 2.64, 2.48, 2.37 (data from UK National Archives CO 136/1332-40; Bouyoucos 1922: table 1; Christakis 2008: tables 2 and 3; http://faostat.fao.org/; and for overall rising 20th century wheat yields in Mediterranean due to careful selective breeding, see for example Sener et al. 2009).
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the Greek Ministry of Culture and the Greek Institute for Geology and Mining, as well as our three primary external funding agencies over the duration of the overall Antikythera Survey Project—the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada, the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Institute for Aegean Prehistory (INSTAP). Dedicated funding for this work in particular was provided through an AHRC Landscape and Environment grant (AH/ E502989/1). Our archaeological sponsor in Athens has been the Canadian Institute in Greece and we are grateful to Jonathan Tomlinson for his assistance throughout. Aris Tsaravopoulos (ASP co-director, Greek Archaeological Service) offered extremely helpful guidance at various stages. We are also grateful to Cyprian Broodbank, Evangelia Kiriatzi and Nancy Krahtopoulou (Kythera Island Project) for discussions about terracing and other issues. Mark Bateman from the luminescence laboratory at the Sheffield Centre for International Drylands Research (SCIDR) kindly undertook the OSL dating and Guelph Laboratories were responsible for the bulk soil analysis from surface samples shown in Fig. 6. The terracing dataset is archived with the UK Archaeology Data Service (doi:10.5284/1012484).
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Bevan, A., Conolly, J., Colledge, S. et al. The Long-Term Ecology of Agricultural Terraces and Enclosed Fields from Antikythera, Greece. Hum Ecol 41, 255–272 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-012-9552-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-012-9552-x