Landscape Capital and Fragile Communities on Antikythera, Greece

Characteristic feature of most Mediterranean landscapes are highly complex and extensive systems of fields, trackways and terraces, but the relationship between these agricultural features and the social context in which they emerge is not clearly understood. Through archaeological, geoarchaeological, environmental and ethnographic study, this research project will build a detailed understanding of the relationship between human decision-making, long-term demographic patterns and the development of such capital investments in the landscape. The main question that will be addresses is whether the construction of terraces and associated structures is directly correlated with periods of dramatic population growth which made it necessary to invest more intensively in less-productive parts of landscape, or whether terraces emerge over a longer time-span, more organically and represent a potential causal factor of demographic growth rather than effect. This question is crucial for understanding the relationship between individual agricultural futures in which such re-useable landscape capital investments are an important issue. For example, rapid construction of terraces across a region provides possible evidence of significant labour organisation encouraged at the community level if not by large state authorities while longer, multi-generational, construction might suggest that highly-complex structures can emerge without the organisation of labour beyond that of the individual household unit.

The project will be undertaken on the island of Antikythera, the focus of an ongoing intensive archaeological investigation by the applicants. Many of the problems associated with understanding the relationship between landscape modifications, such as terraces, are militated against because of the highly episodic settlement history which thus improves our ability to link terrace construction with specific phases of the island's past. The outcome will be a clearer understanding of one of the most characteristic features of Mediterranean rural landscapes, and the social and demographic contexts in which they emerge.