From Pre‐Roman Bailo To Roman Baelo: Long‐Term Landscape Dynamics In The Straits Of Gibraltar

The Straits of Gibraltar have been historically an important maritime axis of connection between the Mediterranean and Atlantic areas of the Iberian Peninsula. For this reason, most of the archaeological research has focused on the coastal settlements, but its broader archaeological landscape remains mostly unknown. In this paper, we present recent intensive surveys in which a wide range of sites was detected, dating from the eighth century BC to the fourteenth AD. The ancient landscape is thus reconstructed over a long‐term perspective. Prior to the Roman expansion, the earlier Bailo‐La Silla del Papa was an urban central place that supported a dense network of subordinate settlements. Later on, the central settlement was transported from inland to the coastal town of Baelo Claudia, but the territorial structure remained based on a similar pattern.This study has been carried out as part of the Franco-German (Agence Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) project – ARCHEOSTRAITS. Espaces protohistoriques du détroit de Gibraltar: les territoires de la Silla del Papa et de Los Castillejos de Alcorrín (IXe – Ier siècle av. J.-C.) – led by D.Marzoli and P.Moret. In this article we have presented the analysis of the Atlantic sector, drawing on a study included in a Junta de Andalucía General Research Project led by P. Moret – La Silla del Papa (Tarifa, Cádiz): oppidum, necropolis and territory (2014-2019)

Brendan meets Columbus: A more commodious islescape

This paper proposes that we can reimagine insular literatures and medieval islescapes as commodious seas of cultural and intellectual loci that span time, culture, and text alike. By moving beyond the rhetoric of insular separation or connectivity, we can see that islands connect even when medieval minds saw separation. The essay focuses on the Brendan legend and the commodious cultural ‘sea of islands’ that it inhabits, a space that connects the modern reader to a history of other connections, fact to fancy, and the real and the imaginary. When sailing in this sea, Brendan meets Columbus, and the late medieval idea of a lost island spreads though space and time

Mediterranean conundrums : pluridisciplinary perspectives for research in the social sciences

This paper has two purposes. First, it summarises the various papers presented at a Pluridisciplinary Conference on the Mediterranean treating the region from a variety of perspectives, a selection of which are published in this issue of History and Anthropology. Second, it attempts to explore some of the tensions between historians and anthropologists, and political scientists and geographers, in the treatment of the region.peer-reviewe

The Equifinality of Archaeological Networks: an Agent-Based Exploratory Lab Approach

When we find an archaeological network, how can we explore the necessary versus contingent processes at play in the formation of that archaeological network? Given a set of circumstances or processes, what other possible network shapes could have emerged? This is the problem of equifinality, where many different means could potentially arrive at the same end result: the networks that we observe. This paper outlines how agent-based modelling can be used as a laboratory for exploring different processes of archaeological network formation. We begin by describing our best guess about how the (ancient) world worked, given our target materials (here, the networks of production and patronage surrounding the Roman brick industry in the hinterland of Rome). We then develop an agent-based model of the Roman extractive economy which generates different kinds of networks under various assumptions about how that economy works. The rules of the simulation are built upon the work of Bang (2006; 2008) who describes a model of the Roman economy which he calls the ‘imperial Bazaar’. The agents are allowed to interact, and the investigators compare the kinds of networks this description generates over an entire landscape of economic possibilities. By rigorously exploring this landscape, and comparing the resultant networks with those observed in the archaeological materials, the investigators will be able to employ the principle of equifinality to work out the representativeness of the archaeological network and thus the underlying processes

Not the End of the World? Post-Classical Decline and Recovery in Rural Anatolia

Between the foundation of Constantinople as capital of the eastern half of the Roman Empire in 330 CE and its sack by the Fourth Crusade in 1204 CE, the Byzantine Empire underwent a full cycle from political-economic stability, through rural insecurity and agrarian decline, and back to renewed prosperity. These stages plausibly correspond to the phases of over-extension (K), subsequent release (Ω) and recovery (α) of the Adaptive Cycle in Socio-Ecological Systems. Here we track and partly quantify the consequences of those changes in different regions of Anatolia, firstly for rural settlement (via regional archaeological surveys) and secondly for land cover (via pollen analysis). We also examine the impact of climate changes on the agrarian system. While individual histories vary, the archaeological record shows a major demographic decline between ca .650 and ca. 900 CE in central and southwestern Anatolia, which was then a frontier zone between Byzantine and Arab armies. In these regions, and also in northwest Anatolia, century-scale trends in pollen indicate a substantial decline in the production of cereal and tree crops, and a smaller decline in pastoral activity. During the subsequent recovery (α) phase after 900 CE there was strong regional differentiation, with central Anatolia moving to a new economic system based on agro-pastoralism, while lowland areas of northern and western Anatolia returned to the cultivation of commercial crops such as olive trees. The extent of recovery in the agrarian economy was broadly predictable by the magnitude of its preceding decline, but the trajectories of recovery varied between different regions

The changing face of the Mediterranean: land cover, demography, and environmental change

This paper introduces a special issue on The Changing Face of the Mediterranean: Land Cover, Demography, and Environmental Change, which brings together up-to-date regional or thematic perspectives on major long-term trends in Mediterranean human–environment relations. Particularly, important insights are provided by palynology to reconstruct past vegetation and land cover, and archaeology to establish long-term demographic trends, but with further significant input from palaeoclimatology, palaeofire research and geomorphology. Here, we introduce the rationale behind this pan-Mediterranean research initiative, outline its major sources of evidence and method, and describe how individual submissions work to complement one another

Mediterranean landscape change during the Holocene: synthesis, comparison and regional trends in population, land cover and climate

This synthesis paper offers a comparative perspective on how seven different Mediterranean regions, from Iberia and Morocco to the Levant, have been transformed by human and natural agencies during the last ten millennia. It draws on a range of sources of data notably, 1) archaeological site surveys (n=32k) and 14C dates (n=12k) as proxies for long-term population change, 2) pollen records as a proxy for past vegetation and land cover (n=157), and 3) proxies, such as stable isotopes, from lake, cave and marine records as indicators of hydro-climate (n=47). Where possible, these data sets have been made spatially and temporally congruent in order to examine relationships between them statistically and graphically. Data have been aggregated or averaged for each region/subregion and put into 200-year time windows. Archaeo-demographic data show a clear increase at the start of Neolithic farming, followed by a series of regionally-asynchronous fluctuations in population, prior to a pan-Mediterranean Roman settlement maximum. Pollen data indicate a Late Holocene decline in %Arboreal Pollen in those regions that were initially well-wooded, but not in drier regions of the southern/eastern Mediterranean. Overall, the clearest palynological proxy for human land cover change is provided by the OJCV (tree crop) index. The cultivation of these trees in the eastern Mediterranean after 6500 Cal yr BP may have been an adaptive response to mid-Holocene climatic desiccation. These anthropogenic pollen indicators correlate more closely with trends in population than with regional hydro-climatic z-scores, implying that they reflect primarily human activities. During the mid-Holocene, most Mediterranean landscapes were transformed by a combination of climate and rural land use, but after ~3500 Cal yr BP, human actions became increasingly dominant in determining land cover. During the last 1500 years the dominant landscape trajectory in the eastern Mediterranean was markedly different to that in the central/western Mediterranean

Redating the formation of Lake Bafa, western Turkey: Integrative geoarchaeological methods and new environmental and dating evidence

The ancient Gulf of Latmos is an iconic example of a dynamic landscape and humankind's historical relationship with it. Using extensive new primary data and original models for calibrating radiocarbon dates in transitional lagoon environments, we demonstrate that Lake Bafa (or Bafa Gölü, in Turkish) formed at a much earlier date than previously thought. In questioning the logical process by which previous dates were achieved, we re‐examine the relationship between sedimentological data, archaeology and written history. We reassert the need to establish independently dated environmental data sets as the foundation of regional studies as distinct from archaeological and historical interpretive processes. We conclude that Lake Bafa slowly transitioned to become an isolated lagoon sometime between the end of the second millennium B.C. and end of the first millennium B.C.; becoming a fully closed brackish lake during the second millennium A.D. This marks a major shift in our understanding of the nature of human occupation and activity here during the last four millennia but also in the way we date ancient lagoons and integrate historical and environmental data in general