1990/01/01 by Tjeerd H. van Andel, Eberhard Zangger, Anne Demitrack · 6 citations
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Earth and Planetary Sciences · #Soil erosion and sediment transport #Geology and Paleoclimatology Research #Archaeology and ancient environmental studies
paper · doi:10.1179/009346990791548628
openalex publication_date 1990/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Soil erosion resulting from human exploitation of the land has attracted much public and scientific interest. Being regarded mainly as a modern phenomenon, however, its prehistoric and historical extent remain largely unexplored. Here we summarize three regional studies of Holocene erosion and alluviation in Greece, together with information derived from the literature, and conclude that most recorded Holocene soil erosion events are spatially and temporally related to human interference in the landscape. Wherever adequate evidence exists, a major phase of soil erosion appears to follow by 500–1000 years the introduction of farming in Greece, its age depending on when agriculture was introduced and ranging from the later Neolithic to the late Early Bronze Age. Later Bronze Age and historical soil erosion events are more scattered in time and space, but especially the thousand years after the middle of the 1st millennium B.C. saw serious, intermittent soil erosion in many places. With the exception of the earliest Holocene erosion phase, the evidence is compatible with a model of control of the timing and intensity of landscape destabilization by local economic and political conditions. On the whole, however, periods of landscape stability have lasted much longer than the mostly brief episodes of soil erosion and stream aggradation.