{"title":"Coping with marsh floods and fires: Resilience at the pile-dwelling site of Dispilio, Northwestern Greece","authors":"Myrsini Gkouma","doi":"10.1002/gea.21996","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>Lacustrine environments are considered favorable locations for Neolithic settlements, constituting a reliable year-round water resource, which contributes to fertile arable land, rich biodiversity, and natural protection. Living by the wetlands, however, is characterized by intensive ecological vulnerabilities, that is, floods and fire events. These recurrent episodes are difficult to trace in the occupation layers since natural processes combined with human activities can form variable mixed microenvironments. Consequently, the direct impact of these events on the biography of the settlement and the decision-making of its inhabitants is understudied. This paper presents a high-resolution, microstratigraphic analysis at the Neolithic pile-dwelling settlement of Dispilio (Kastoria, northern Greece) to trace past ecological threats and unravel the resilience strategies of the lake-dwellers against the continuously altered microenvironments. By correlating the results with regional environmental and cultural events, this paper questions the role of environmental changes as triggers for cultural modifications and considers a wide range of strategies for coping with wetland hazards.</p>","PeriodicalId":55117,"journal":{"name":"Geoarchaeology-An International Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4000,"publicationDate":"2024-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Geoarchaeology-An International Journal","FirstCategoryId":"89","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/gea.21996","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"ARCHAEOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Lacustrine environments are considered favorable locations for Neolithic settlements, constituting a reliable year-round water resource, which contributes to fertile arable land, rich biodiversity, and natural protection. Living by the wetlands, however, is characterized by intensive ecological vulnerabilities, that is, floods and fire events. These recurrent episodes are difficult to trace in the occupation layers since natural processes combined with human activities can form variable mixed microenvironments. Consequently, the direct impact of these events on the biography of the settlement and the decision-making of its inhabitants is understudied. This paper presents a high-resolution, microstratigraphic analysis at the Neolithic pile-dwelling settlement of Dispilio (Kastoria, northern Greece) to trace past ecological threats and unravel the resilience strategies of the lake-dwellers against the continuously altered microenvironments. By correlating the results with regional environmental and cultural events, this paper questions the role of environmental changes as triggers for cultural modifications and considers a wide range of strategies for coping with wetland hazards.
期刊介绍:
Geoarchaeology is an interdisciplinary journal published six times per year (in January, March, May, July, September and November). It presents the results of original research at the methodological and theoretical interface between archaeology and the geosciences and includes within its scope: interdisciplinary work focusing on understanding archaeological sites, their environmental context, and particularly site formation processes and how the analysis of sedimentary records can enhance our understanding of human activity in Quaternary environments. Manuscripts should examine the interrelationship between archaeology and the various disciplines within Quaternary science and the Earth Sciences more generally, including, for example: geology, geography, geomorphology, pedology, climatology, oceanography, geochemistry, geochronology, and geophysics. We also welcome papers that deal with the biological record of past human activity through the analysis of faunal and botanical remains and palaeoecological reconstructions that shed light on past human-environment interactions. The journal also welcomes manuscripts concerning the examination and geological context of human fossil remains as well as papers that employ analytical techniques to advance understanding of the composition and origin or material culture such as, for example, ceramics, metals, lithics, building stones, plasters, and cements. Such composition and provenance studies should be strongly grounded in their geological context through, for example, the systematic analysis of potential source materials.