JASREP-00585; No of Pages 11

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports xxx (2016) xxx–xxx

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Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports

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Sedimentation as geomorphological bias and indicator of agricultural

(un)sustainability in the study of the coastal plains of South and Central Italy
in antiquity
Peter Attema
Groningen Institute of Archaeology, University of Groningen, Netherlands

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Environmental research of ancient landscapes in the coastal plains, river valleys and uplands of the Mediterra-
Received 25 January 2016 nean shows how erosion and sedimentation studies play a significant role in the evaluation of the archaeological
Received in revised form 14 July 2016 record at the regional and local scales. As a rule, directors of landscape archaeological projects nowadays involve
Accepted 22 July 2016
physical geographers in order to study erosion and sedimentation as potentially influential post-depositional
Available online xxxx
processes that may expose or cover up archaeological remains (long) after regions or sites were abandoned.
Keywords:
This is a phenomenon in the literature known as geomorphological bias, i.e. bias caused by landscape taphonomic
Landscape archaeology processes. Key question here is to what extent archaeological settlement patterns are an artefact of landscape
Landscape taphonomy change, with deposition obscuring large parts of the ancient Mediterranean landscape. At the same time, it is im-
Agricultural sustainability portant for our knowledge of past societies to establish whether these landscape processes affected the sustain-
Greek and Roman colonization ability of the human environments of sites and regions already while they were settled, and how people adapted
Italy to environmental changes in accordance with the socio-political and socio-economic context. Sustainability is de-
fined in this paper as the capacity of a rural economy to endure in a given environmental and socio-economic set-
ting. A key question from this perspective is whether erosion and sedimentation studies can help explain why
some rural landscapes in the long run were economically more viable than others. Drawing on case studies
from landscape archaeological and excavation projects of the Groningen Institute of Archaeology, this paper ap-
proaches Mediterranean sedimentation history in South and Central Italy from the angles of geomorphological
bias and sustainability studies. The focus is on the coastal plains of the Sibaritide in South Italy and the Pontine
plain in Central Italy, both of which have been subject to profound landscape changes caused by sedimentation
starting at least in the Bronze Age, and caused by erosion in their hinterlands as the result of long term human
impact in combination with climatic changes, sea-level change and neotectonics. Although already settled in
pre- and protohistory, both coastal plains were targeted for the first time during phases of Greek and Roman col-
onization as areas of organized agricultural expansion (see Table 1 for a chronological overview of archaeological
periods). However, in both cases long term sustainable exploitation proved difficult due to a complex of environ-
mental, technological, socio-economic, and political factors.
© 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

1. Introduction
Since Vita Finzi's, 1969 seminal publication The Mediterranean Val-
leys: Geological Changes in Historical Times, in which he outlined basical-
ly two phases of alluviation, a post-glacial Older Fill and a Late or post-
Roman Younger Fill, each comprising several erosion and sedimentation
cycles, Mediterranean landscapes have seen much geoarchaeological
work detailing Mediterranean alluviation history of the later pre- and
protohistorical periods and Classical Antiquity (Bell and Walker, 1992,
190–192; Walsh 2014, 81–101). Geoarchaeological research of ancient
E-mail address: p.a.j.attema@rug.nl.
landscapes in the coastal plains, river valleys and uplands of Central
and South Italy shows how erosion and sedimentation studies play a
significant role in the evaluation of the archaeological record at the re-
gional and local scales as they can elucidate geomorphological biases
in data recovered from archaeological surface survey, and at the same
time yield information on the sustainability of the Mediterranean land-
scapes of the past. As Roberts (1998, 191–192) states, historical soil ero-
sion in the Mediterranean will often have been a combined product of
natural and cultural forces, notably of climate and agricultural impact,
and `thin or erodible soils, steep slopes, a vegetation vulnerable to fire,
and rainfall that can be intense and erosive make the Mediterranean
ecosystems sensible to uncontrolled human impact. Casana (2008), for
instance, has shown how a variable precipitation regime increase,

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2016.07.024
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Please cite this article as: Attema, P., Sedimentation as geomorphological bias and indicator of agricultural (un)sustainability in the study of the
coastal plains of Sout..., Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2016.07.024
2 P. Attema / Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports xxx (2016) xxx–xxx
including extreme weather events, will have strong effects on the rate of
erosion in intensively exploited landscapes, such as the Hellenistic and
Roman landscapes in the Northern Levant. From an archaeological per-
spective, John Bintliff's 1977 publication Natural Environment and
Human Settlement in Prehistoric Greece (1977) may be viewed as a
benchmark in establishing a firmer disciplinary relationship between
regional settlement history (as practiced by archaeologists) and the
study of the natural environment of the Mediterranean (as practiced
by geographers and biologists). However, those earlier models were
still rather deterministic, as Bintliff himself readily remarked in a later
overview paper on landscape change in Classical Greece published in
2000. In that paper, he concluded how between the end of the seventies
and the end of the nineties rapidly growing body of empirical evidence
would rather support more multi-causal interpretations ‘whilst also
raising important questions regarding the impact of these events on
contemporary societies’ Bintliff (2000), 68; see also Bintliff (1992) and
Bintliff (2002). At the same time survey archaeologists working in the
Mediterranean became aware of the biases erosion and sedimentation
represented for the interpretation of the regional archaeological record
they were mapping. As van Leusen stated in his dissertation published
in 2000, geopedological research had become a required part of regional
projects not only in order to map one of the most important factors in
past land use, but also to map geomorphological bias in the survey re-
sults (van Leusen 2000, chapter 8, 4). This paper focuses on these two
main themes that can be summarized as landscape change as a major
bias in regional settlement studies and the effect of landscape change
in coastal plains on sustainable land use. (See Table 1.)
While many survey projects nowadays integrate environmental
work, to date there are only few studies available that have integrated
such work on a regional scale. Moreover, it is uncertain whether archae-
ologists, or ancient historians for that matter, who work with regional
settlement data always grasp the implications of erosion and sedimen-
tation processes for a reliable interpretation of regional settlement pat-
terns across space and time. But neither are the economic problems and
opportunities that natural and man-induced landscape change brought
to past societies always fully realized; in other words, how did land-
scape change affect the sustainability of settlement and land use in a
given region in antiquity, and how did humans react to perceived
changes in their environment and how did people develop and apply
environmental knowledge (Walsh 2014, 7–9)?
Below I will address the issues of geomorphological bias and sustain-
ability of Mediterranean landscapes outlined in the introduction by
discussing two case studies from fieldwork projects carried out by the
Groningen Institute of Archaeology in Central and South Italy (Attema
et al. 2010, chapters 2 and 4 for introductions to these landscapes).
First I will present examples of sedimentation regimes that had caused
the profound burial of ancient land surfaces, as such seriously impeding
the reading of settlement development on the regional scale. Two cases
will be presented; the Sibaritide coastal plain in northern Calabria and
the Pontine coastal plain in south Lazio (Fig. 1). In both cases hand
augerings, the cores of which were radiocarbon dated, have revealed
the sedimentary impact of erosion during the later Holocene on the
Table 1
Periodisation used in this article (date ranges are in years BC/AD).
6500–3650 Neolithic
3650–2250 Eneolithic (Copper Age)
2250–1700 Early Bronze Age
1700–1300 Middle Bronze Age
1300–925 Late Bronze Age
925–725 Early Iron Age
725–580 Late Iron Age
580–480 Archaic period
480–30 Republican period
30–476 Imperial period
476–1000 Early Middle Ages
Please cite this article as: Attema, P., Sedimentation as geomorphological bias and indicator of agricultural (un)sustainability in the study of the
coastal plains of Sout..., Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2016.07.024
lower parts of the landscape. Next, the issue of how far we may study
sedimentary archives from a contemporary perspective will be dealt
with, in other words: how did erosion and sedimentation actually affect
the sustainability of the human environments of sites and regions while
they were settled? For this aspect, I will draw on the same two case
studies, the Sibaritide and Pontine plain, defining sustainability in a
landscape archaeological context as the capacity of a rural economy to
endure in a given environmental and socio-economic setting. I empha-
size the special position of the coastal plains in the Mediterranean envi-
ronment being both among the most fertile and most vulnerable
landscape units.
2. Sedimentation as geomorphological bias in South and Central
Italy
The geography of South and Central Italy is characterized by inland
mountainous areas, river valleys and wide coastal plains. In the latter,
without exception, considerable sediments accumulated over time in
their hinterlands (Brückner 1986; Abbott 1997; Abbott in Carter and
Prieto 2011; Attema and Sevink, forthcoming); posing serious problems
for our interpretation of regional settlement development. While early
forms of urbanization in many of the South and Central Italian land-
scapes can now be traced back into the final phases of the Bronze Age
(Pacciarelli 2000), we must realize that due to geomorphological bias
we have but a partial view of rural settlement accompanying nucleated
settlement. This not only holds true for prehistoric phases, but also for
the landscapes of Classical Antiquity. For example, in the Metapontine
plain on the Adriatic coast, many of the farmsteads of the early Archaic
period (around 600 BCE) may be buried below the alluvium of the
Basento and Bradano rivers and their tributaries. In the Basento river
valley, they were only found when infrastructural works were carried
out below the current plough zone (Carter and Prieto 2011, 641–643).
However, remains of farmsteads of the Classical and Hellenistic period,
whose owners did not seek locations along the river but founded their
farms over the plain between the main river valleys of the Basento
and Bradano, do appear in abundance in the plough zone (Carter and
Prieto 2011, 677 ff.). Clearly the sedimentation regime of the
Metapontine rivers has consequences for our chronological and spatial
understanding of the scale of ruralisation during the Archaic period con-
nected with Greek colonization.
The Holocene sedimentation record is not only a problem for under-
standing the settlement archaeology of the Metapontino, but that of
other coastal plains of South Italy as well (see e.g. Abbott and Valastro
1995, Abbott 1997), and similar problems occur in the coastal land-
scapes and river valleys in Central and northern Italy, as exemplified
by the buried prehistoric landscape of the Po plain (Calabrese et al.
2010). The two case studies of the Sibaritide and Pontine plains are
therefore not exceptional as to their dynamic character, but at the
same time serve to show the notable variability in timing, nature and
impact of sedimentation regimes within regions across Italy, and by ex-
tension the Mediterranean.
In the plain of the Sibaritide, sedimentation has been intense, and
here the entire prehistoric to (post) Roman landscape is buried under
a many meters of alluvial sediment, the causes of which are debated
in the geological literature (Vanzetti 2013, 24–28 for an overview). In
the Pontine plain the situation is different. Here the protohistoric settle-
ment phases are only locally deeply buried, while as a rule the Roman
landscape is visible in the plough soil (Attema et al. 2010, 31–58). This
signifies that sedimentation was reduced in post-Roman times, possibly
because of lack of sediment supply from an already eroded hinterland.
The two case studies illustrate not only the problem of how to cover se-
rious chronological and spatial gaps in our knowledge of regional settle-
ment development that are due to geomorphological bias but also the
problem how to reconstruct evolving and contracting regional settle-
ment on the basis of partial data.
 P. Attema / Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports xxx (2016) xxx–xxx 3

Fig. 1. Map of Italy showing the location of the plain of Sybaris in South Italy and the Pontine plain in Central Italy. Also indicated are the Metapontine and Po plains.

2.1. The Sibaritide plain
The vast alluvial coastal plain of Sybaris is located on the Gulf of Ta-
ranto on the Adriatic Sea and is surrounded by the foothills of the Pollino
mountains in the north-west and the foothills of the Sila and Mula
mountains in the south-west (Attema et al. 2010, 82). Fig. 2 shows the
extent of the plain with sites mentioned in the text and major rivers
draining it. These rivers over time deposited thick layers of clay and
clayey silts. Sedimentary deposits at places contain intermediary layers
with organic materials suitable for radiocarbon dating. From published
dated sequences obtained in various investigations by coring, it can be
safely deduced that sedimentation in the plain started well before the
foundation of the Greek colony of Sybaris (e.g. Cherubini et al. 1994;
Cucci 2005; Bernasconi et al., 2010; Attema et al. 2010, 22 and fig. 1.6;
Ferranti et al. 2011). A recently published, though highly tentative re-
construction of the intensity of sedimentation across time on basis of
all available radiocarbon dates by Italian protohistorian Alessandro Van-
zetti, would indicate that sedimentation had already started by around
6000 BCE. This is interpreted by this author as the consequence of seri-
ous human impact on the landscape in the hinterland of the plain due to
the neolithisation process. This, however, seems unlikely given low
population numbers (compared with later periods), the use of hoe cul-
tivation and the non-anthropogenic factors that should be taken into ac-
count (Vanzetti 2013, 27 and Fig. 4). Sedimentation in following phases
would, according to this author, have been less intense, and relatively
stable periods occurred, as for instance during the Eneolithic and An-
cient Bronze Age. During the periods of Greek colonization and subse-
quent Hellenistic and Roman periods, rural expansion in the plain was
possible, although hydrological management would have been required
(Bellotti et al., 2009, 69). Sedimentation increased again during the later
historical periods which, in combination with failing hydrological man-
agement, resulted in a deeply buried archaeological landscape.
The effects sedimentation in the plain of Sybaris have had on the vis-
ibility of the archaeological record is clear from even a quick glance on
the archaeological map of the Sibaritide produced in the late 1960′s by
De Rossi et al. (1969). (Fig. 3) While the foothills show a busy protohis-
toric and classical landscape, the plain is suspiciously empty, except for
the excavated site of Sybaris that was founded by Greek settlers in the
period of the Greek migrations starting in the late 8th century BC. In-
deed, Sybaris was only discovered after an intensive mechanical coring
and geophysical campaign carried out in the 1960s by a research team
of the University of Pennsylvania led by Froehlich Rainey in collabora-
tion with Carlo M. Lerici of the Italian Lerici foundation (Rainey and
Lerici 1967). The Greek colony was found to be located along the river
Crati below a thick cover of alluvium. Palaeogeographical research indi-
cates that the settlement bordered a lagoon that would have functioned
as an inland harbor (tentative reconstructions in Bellotti et al. 2009,
Fig. 2). Considerable progradation of the coastline since the Iron Age, al-
though reconstructed in various ways, is responsible for the now more
inland position of ancient Sybaris that at the time was certainly a coastal
city like most other Greek and Phoenician colonies planted around the
Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Archaeological materials collected at
considerable depths from the over 1500 Rainey/Lerici corings and radio-
carbon dating of sediments, done as part of the various environmental
investigations referred to above, demonstrate continuous alluviation
in the coastal plain of Sybaris following ancient occupation phases,

Please cite this article as: Attema, P., Sedimentation as geomorphological bias and indicator of agricultural (un)sustainability in the study of the
coastal plains of Sout..., Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2016.07.024
4 P. Attema / Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports xxx (2016) xxx–xxx

Fig. 2. The plain of Sybaris in South Italy with archaeological sites and rivers mentioned in the text (after Fig. 4.1 in Attema et al. 2010).

this renders archaeological surface survey a hopeless exercise. Fig. 4
shows the dated deposits in hand augerings carried out by the Groning-
en Institute of Archaeology in the plain. At certain locations we found
that radiocarbon dates at a depth of over 7 m were not older than
2150 years BP. The regression line indicates an average sedimentation
speed of 0.5 cm/year over the period 2100 to 450 BP and suggests that
strong sedimentation stopped at about 450 BP. The number of dated
augerings on the whole is still limited, as Roovers 2011 has stressed,
and it is not possible to differentiate sedimentation processes in more
detail over the plain, as is possible for the second case study presented
below. However, a conclusion that can be made is that the sedimenta-
tion rates will differ according to the proximity of the rivers (Roovers
2011, 21). The calculations on average sedimentation speed are in line
with similar estimates by Italian researchers (Cotecchia and Pagliarulo
1996; Cherubini et al. 1994).
In the Rainey/Lerici corings, datable archaeological layers with iden-
tifiable Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic or Roman materials were gen-
erally found at depths between 3 and 6 m, far below the level reached by
modern deep-ploughing. Mapping the archaeologically relevant
augerings in GIS in period maps, as illustrated in Fig. 5, gives an interest-
ing but of course very partial insight in the rural development of settle-
ment in the plain. In the sixth century BC, the city of Sybaris would
already have been quite large and ruralisation low, but by the 4th c.
BC, after the refounding of the city, then called Thurioi, the city had
contracted, but ruralisation had increased (Roovers 2011). In the
Rainey/Lerici corings in the plain only few Roman Republican or Impe-
rial materials were found that can be related to the Roman colonia of
Copiae. The plain appears to have been largely abandoned during this
period, settlement in the foothills was also lower, as we have observed
in systematic archaeological surveys along part of the foothills of the
Sibaritide (van Leusen and Attema 2003).
2.2. The Pontine plain
The Pontine plain is located on the Tyrrhenian coast in Central Italy
and borders inland on the limestone massifs of the Lepini mountains
in the north and the Ausoni mountains in the east (Fig. 6). It comprises
a complex series of marine terraces on the coast and an inland lagoon,
still open during the Bronze Age (Feiken 2014, 259–280 and Fig. 9.2
on the palaeography of the Pontine plain). The lagoon was gradually
filled in with lagoonal sediments turning it into a swamp as the marine
terraces impeded drainage of rivers originating in the hinterland and
water coming from springs at the foot of the Lepini mountains
(Kamermans 1991, Sevink et al. 1984). The swamp, today drained, be-
came historically known as the Pontine marshes. Colluviation and
alluviation in the plain notably affected those parts of the plain adjacent
to the foothills of the Lepini and Ausoni mountains, but were also caused
by rivers originating in the nearby Alban hills that deposited sediments
in the northwestern part of the Pontine plain (Sevink et al. 1984, Attema
and Delvigne, 2000). In the northeastern part, the Amaseno river depos-
ited sediments burying parts of the ancient landscape, including that of
the Roman period (van Joolen, 2003). Like in the Sibaritide, the land-
scape, as we perceive it today, is thus very different from that of antiq-
uity, and in the Pontine plain sedimentation has likewise been an
important agent of environmental change. However in contrast to the
plain of Sybaris, sedimentation in the Pontine plain has only buried

Please cite this article as: Attema, P., Sedimentation as geomorphological bias and indicator of agricultural (un)sustainability in the study of the
coastal plains of Sout..., Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2016.07.024
 P. Attema / Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports xxx (2016) xxx–xxx 5

Fig. 3. Archaeological sites mapped in the archaeological surveys of De Rossi et al. 1969 (after Fig. 1.7 in Attema et al. 2010).

parts of the archaeological landscape, and alluvial and colluvial deposits
generally cover only the pre-Roman phases; Roman and later artefacts
pertaining to ancient settlements in large parts of the Pontine plain (al-
though not everywhere) will appear at the surface after ploughing
while Roman built remains may still be visible on the surface (Attema
1993, Attema and van Leusen 2004, de Haas 2011). This means that, al-
though to a lesser extent, the Pontine plain is influenced by a strong
geomorphological bias as the archaeological surface record will high-
light Roman occupation phases but underrepresent previous phases.
Below I will briefly discuss two areas in the Pontine plain, the lower
Amaseno valley and the Campi di Sezze respectively. These areas are
geographically near to each other, but show different sedimentation
histories relevant to ancient occupation and land use potential (Fig. 7).
Such investigations were carried out within the framework of the Pon-
tine Region Project which, since the mid-1980s has studied the settle-
ment and land use history of the Pontine region from the Bronze Age
into the Medieval period (Attema et al., 2010, 31–58). On the basis of
the sedimentological information obtained from hand augerings and ra-
diocarbon dating of peat layers, several phases of (fluvio)-colluvial
deposition could be reconstructed in the Amaseno basin dating between
1600 and 1400 BCE and CE 600–700 potentially burying archaeology
(van Joolen, 2003, 68–84). In the plain below Sezze, radio carbon
dated hand augerings likewise revealed a thick alluvial/colluvial sheet
that covered the former landscape, but this sedimentation started earli-
er. Peaty deposits to depths of up to 6 m were dated to 2500 to 2200 BCE
(Attema et al. 2010, 41–43; Feiken 2014, 196–200). The supply of sedi-
ments needed for this gradual transformation may be attributed to soil
instability and consequent erosion in the Lepini and Ausoni mountains
and in the Alban Hills. Palynological data from cores carried out in the
plain point to increased human impact in all landscape units (van
Joolen, 2003), while the chronology of sedimentation phases would in
general terms correlate with increased settlement pressure in the
wider landscape around the plain from the Middle Bronze Age onwards
(Alessandri 2013 for Bronze Age settlement evolution). Sedimentation
in the plain may thus have been caused by deforestation and subse-
quent grazing on the slopes of the Lepini and Ausoni mountains and
the Alban Hills although the influence of climatic factors cannot be
ruled out.

Please cite this article as: Attema, P., Sedimentation as geomorphological bias and indicator of agricultural (un)sustainability in the study of the
coastal plains of Sout..., Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2016.07.024
6 P. Attema / Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports xxx (2016) xxx–xxx
Fig. 4. Sedimentation speed in the Sibaritide plain as derived from depth of radiocarbon
dated deposits in hand augerings (after Attema et al. 2010, Fig. 1.6).
Nowadays, the Lepini and Ausoni mountains appear very eroded,
and sediment supply in the plain of Sezze may have stopped in some
areas during the Roman period. Excavations carried out by the Groning-
en Institute of Archaeology in the plain below Sezze at Tratturo Caniò re-
vealed a succession of occupational layers, the earliest of which was
found just above an ash layer attributed to the Vesuvius Avellino erup-
tion dated shortly before 2000 BCE (Feiken et al. 2012; Feiken 2014).
This ash layer has been observed in multiple corings and test pits in
the Pontine plain (Sevink et al. 2011). Middle Bronze Age artefacts
and ecofacts at Tratturo Caniò point to a settlement context indicating
that by the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age the landscape bordering
on the former lagoon had become sufficiently dry for permanent human
occupation, though concentrated at certain attractive locations, such as
relatively high and dry levees. Levels higher in the stratigraphy at
Tratturo Caniò attested to occupation well into the Roman Republican
period (Feiken et al., 2012; Feiken 2014; Attema forthcoming). Early
Iron Age to Roman Republican phases showed a, possibly continuous,
cultic use of the site, culminating in the erection in the Republican peri-
od of a small stone temple dedicated to the goddess Juno. In its sur-
roundings intensive archaeological survey mapped a densely settled
Roman countryside (Attema et al. 2014).The excavation at Tratturo
Caniò however made clear how the Roman landscape visible in the
plough soil was partly a continuation of earlier occupation phases not
visible in the archaeological surface record due to alluvial and colluvial
deposition following the initial Bronze Age occupation phase. At the
same time, it makes clear how people adapted to changing environmen-
tal circumstances in the periods following the Bronze Age.
2.3. Local and regional variability in sedimentation regimes
The Sibaritide and Pontine plains show that both landscapes were
dynamic environments due to alluviation and colluviation as a
Fig. 5. Approximate urban surfaces of Sybaris (6th c. BC), Thurioi and Copiae and intensity of rural occupation as deduced from the Rainey/Lerici corings (after Roovers 2011,
Figs. 9b, 10b, and 11b).
Please cite this article as: Attema, P., Sedimentation as geomorphological bias and indicator of agricultural (un)sustainability in the study of the
coastal plains of Sout..., Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2016.07.024
consequence of inland erosion. In this sense our examples can be said
to be representative for the larger part of the coastal plains of the Italian
peninsula (Attema and Sevink forthcoming). However, sedimentation
histories appear to have quite different impacts on the visibility of the
archaeological record. While in the plain of Sybaris, sedimentation cov-
ered the entire sequence of past occupation, in the Pontine plain this
was more discontinuous and localised. Clearly sedimentation regimes
are dependent on local geological circumstances, climatic changes and
local episodes of human impact, and many more case studies from Med-
iterranean landscapes are available that reinforce this point (see e.g.
Walsh 2014). While we must thus acknowledge local diversity in
causes, effects and timing of sedimentation phases, there may be
supraregional spatial and chronological patterning too, and more re-
search should be done to correlate data on episodes of human impact
with climate change now that in various studies Holocene climate
changes are being described (e.g. Magny and Combourieu Nebout,
2013, Mensing et al. 2015). For instance, above we discussed the case
of Tratturo Caniò in the Pontine plain; the challenge however will be
to correlate this case with the many other observations done in the Pon-
tine plain in order to arrive at a detailed long term regional picture of the
interaction between man and his environment that includes Holocene
climatic changes. As of yet, correlating the substantial body of environ-
mental data from sedimentation studies and palynological research
from the Pontine Plain with data relating to climate change is hampered
by insufficient robustness of the available radiocarbon dates. The data
from sedimentation studies and individual pollen cores have not yet
been interconnected to carry out an integrated environmental study
on the regional scale, though this is planned in current research of the
Pontine Region Project. From our case studies it is clear that systematic
research into the variable sedimentary regimes in order to map geomor-
phological bias is of the utmost importance for the evaluation of settle-
ment patterns of any coastal landscape or river valley, and therefore
should be an integral component in every landscape archaeological pro-
ject. A second reason to study sedimentation and its origins, erosion, in
archaeological survey projects is to obtain knowledge on the conse-
quences of erosion and sedimentation for contemporaneous society,
and how the phenomenon was perceived and dealt with in past
societies.
3. Sedimentation as indicator of past sustainability of the Mediterra-
nean landscapes of antiquity
Ancient agro-ecosystems, as Abbas Farshad (2002, 190) calls them,
change “so gradually that they looked almost unchanged for centuries”.
However, we know from environmental studies, as exemplified above,
that erosion and sedimentation in certain landscapes were such that
they must have had serious impact on the sustainability of ancient agri-
culture and subsistence strategies. Regional studies have shown that
landscape change due to erosion and sedimentation in the Mediterra-
nean occurred on the scale of centuries, most often due to intensifica-
tion of land use in uplands and sub-mountainous zones, with climate
change as an important factor too. Locally landscape change due to ero-
sion and sedimentation could however have had short term conse-
quences and may have taken the form of local catastrophic events,
such as landslides, mudflows and lahars. An instance of a mudflow af-
fecting the ancient landscape was mapped in detail in the Pontine
plain and can be cited as an example of a short term, potentially cata-
strophic change (Attema 1993, 97–105). While Farshad (2002, 189) is
right that knowledge of past environmental changes helps us to under-
stand the dynamics, behavior, tolerance and resource potential of land-
scapes across time and space, and that this knowledge may be used for
present-day strategies of land evaluation, it also informs us on the actual
sustainability of ancient landscapes and the ways farmers dealt with
 P. Attema / Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports xxx (2016) xxx–xxx 7

Please cite this article as: Attema, P., Sedimentation as geomorphological bias and indicator of agricultural (un)sustainability in the study of the
coastal plains of Sout..., Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2016.07.024
8 P. Attema / Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports xxx (2016) xxx–xxx

Fig. 6. Map showing the location of the Pontine plain in Central Italy with archaeological sites and rivers mentioned in the text (after Fig. 1.2 in Attema et al. 2010).

environmental change, or in the words of Kevin Walsh how ‘people un-
derstand and engage with their landscape and environment’. The latter
scholar asserts that Mediterranean cultures do share certain forms of
landscape-management strategies but acknowledges at the same time
that ‘these strategies are contingent upon historical, cultural, and eco-
nomic processes that vary across time and space’ (Walsh 2014, 7–8).
Current cultural ecological approaches emphasize this relationship
and are helpful in understanding the interaction between humans and
their environments. Below I will explore this approach further, for
which I again turn to the coastal plains of South and Central Italy.
Greek colonization on the shores of the Mediterranean was charac-
terized by the founding of coastal settlements, many of which were
quick to develop into sizeable port towns (Osanna 1992). In South
Italy, Sybaris, situated on a slightly inland lagoon and river, is an emi-
nent example of this. Clearly the population of these steadily growing
cities had to be sustained by agricultural produce from the surrounding
land. While initially the food demand would have been met by citizens
working the land but living in the colonies, soon ruralisation of the sur-
rounding countryside would have been necessary to meet the food de-
mands of the expanding centre (Yoffee 2005, 60). This demand resulted
in growing numbers of permanent rural settlements, villages, hamlets,
farmsteads or a combination of these, producing food surpluses. This
process must have started in the 6th century BC, as in the Metapontino
with its Archaic farmsteads found below the alluvium along the Basento
river, and in the Sibaritide with sporadic Archaic pottery from cores in
the plain of Sybaris. From the abundant archaeological surface record
dating to the Hellenistic periods, it is clear that successful expansion of
rural settlement was dependent on hydrological technology to drain
and irrigate the land, and implementation of canals led to successful
rural exploitation (Carter and Prieto 2011, 1027–1051). Maintenance
of hydrology was therefore imperative and dependent on a well-func-
tioning socio-political organization. Joseph Coleman Carter has on the
basis of his archaeological surveys convincingly shown how fluctuations
occurred in the density of rural settlement during the Hellenistic period
in the Metapontino and how already in the Roman period the intensive
cultivation of the land was abandoned, due to a complex of political and
socio-economic changes and subsequent environmental deterioration
due to lack of caring for the land.
The same scenario can be sketched for the ruralisation of the plain of
Sybaris where agriculture during the Hellenistic periods was wide-
spread judging from the Rainey/Lerici corings with archaeological mate-
rials found in them. Apparently the produce from the plain, including
that of the surrounding foothills, was capable to sustain the inhabitants
of Thurioi, the successor city of Sybaris, with enough surplus for trading
to bring in the capital needed to invest in the upkeep and embellish-
ment of the city. But also in the plain of Sybaris farming was not sustain-
able in the longer term due to complex socio-economic, political and
environmental factors. Already at the start of the Roman period, land
was abandoned, while failing counter measures against the silting up
of drainage canals led to the concurrent formation of extensive
marshlands. Indeed, malaria ridden swamps were a common sight in
the coastal plains of Italy from later antiquity onwards, a situation that
only ended with the wholesale reclamation programs under Mussolini
around the 1930's when many of these swamps (both in Italy and

Please cite this article as: Attema, P., Sedimentation as geomorphological bias and indicator of agricultural (un)sustainability in the study of the
coastal plains of Sout..., Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2016.07.024
 P. Attema / Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports xxx (2016) xxx–xxx 9

Fig. 7. Map showing locations of cores in the ‘Campi di Sezze’ area (white dots) and the lower Amaseno river valley (black dots with white outline) and sediment cover (after Fig. 2.4 in
Attema et al. 2010). The numerals 2–4 indicate various phases of sedimentation in the lower Amaseno valley.

elsewhere in Europe) were eliminated on a grand scale to be turned into
agricultural land (Renes and Piastra 2011). Of the many projects, the
reclamation of the Pontine Marshes is archaeologically and historically
probably researched in most detail (Attema 1993, 28; Linoli 2005).
Coastal plains like the plain of Sybaris and the Metapontino in antiquity,
as well as in the recent past, were pre-eminently agricultural expansion
zones with the more stable agricultural agro-ecosystems situated in the
foothills. In the hills around the plain of Sybaris, for instance, settlement
continued after the period of Hellenistic expansion, be it much reduced
in terms of settlement numbers.
Also in the Pontine plain sedimentation caused landscape instability
in the plain at various points in time and with spatial variability. Sedi-
mentological and ecological investigations below the level of the
Avellino ashes that covered the Pontine plain suggest that the surround-
ings of the fresh water lagoon were already cultivated well before the
deposition of the ash shortly after 2000 BCE. However, at a later stage,
at the end of the Bronze Age, alluvio-colluvial deposits would cover
this particular part of the landscape, turning it into an unstable environ-
ment to live in, negatively affecting the Bronze Age wetland economy
on the shores of the former lake. Judging from the archaeological evi-
dence, occupation of the area around Tratturo Caniò remained possible,
although settlement may have been intermittent. However, by the
Roman period, the area, then either constituting farmland of the
Roman colony of Setia, or land designated as ager romanus, was widely
available for intensive agriculture, and a flourishing local economy de-
veloped here focusing on the production of wine and olive oil in the
plain and foothills (Attema et al. 2014). At the same time the landscape
along the lower Amaseno remained subject to environmental change
for a longer period that extended well into the medieval period.
As such, the Pontine plain is a pre-eminent example of an agricul-
tural expansion zone in a vulnerable landscape. Like in the coastal
plains of South Italy colonized by the Greeks, attempts were also
made in the Pontine plain to reclaim the area for intensive cultiva-
tion, here slightly later, during the mid-Republican period, and in
this case the Romans (Walsh et al. 2014). While farming the Pontine
plain initially may have been successful, as elsewhere, it was not sus-
tainable, and we have evidence that the situation in the graben dete-
riorated by the end of the Republican period. In addition, here the
plain became covered in swamps, again most likely due to lack of
maintenance of the drainage works that initially had made settle-
ment and intensive agriculture possible, but now led to the forma-
tion of marshes (Walsh et al. 2014).
On the one hand, the above case studies show that landscape-man-
agement strategies are indeed contingent upon historical, cultural, and
economic processes that vary across time and space, as Walsh asserts,
but also that we, through comparative research, may start to discern
patterning in sustainable and unsustainable landscapes and land-
scape-management strategies in ancient Mediterranean landscapes. To
study the phenomenon of episodic intensive cultivation cycles in the
Mediterranean coastal plains, we clearly need extensive detailed sedi-
mentological research of past drainage systems in combination with ab-
solute dating of their initial construction, use history and their final

Please cite this article as: Attema, P., Sedimentation as geomorphological bias and indicator of agricultural (un)sustainability in the study of the
coastal plains of Sout..., Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2016.07.024
10 P. Attema / Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports xxx (2016) xxx–xxx
neglect as indicated by sedimentary infill. This will increase our under-
standing of the technology, life-cycle and sustainability of reclamations
in antiquity as well as give insights into environmental knowledge that
was available. This will allow us to bring episodes of intensive and often
centrally organized farming into relation with socio-political organiza-
tion. When Roman farming in the Pontine plain in late Antiquity ceased
altogether, it was, as in the Sibaritide, the foothills where settlement and
land use continued. This is another example of patterning: the foothills
as relatively stable intermediate landscape units between the Mediter-
ranean coastal plains and the uplands. These landscape units seem to
have been the most resilient and sustainable parts of the Mediterranean
landscape being suitable for polyculture and pastoral exploitation. The
point that Mediterranean coastal plains may have in common is that
they could not be sustainably exploited for larger scale commercial ara-
ble farming over longer periods, and that in antiquity this rather hap-
pened in relatively short (boom-bust) cycles due to the inherent
environmental instability of the coastal plains in combination with
changing socio-economic and geo-political contexts less conducive to
their exploitation, among which we should certainly rank the waxing
and waning of the coastal cities. To substantiate such a claim, more com-
parative work is needed.
4. Conclusions
In this paper I have explored two themes that can be investigated
through sedimentation studies.
The first was geomorphological bias, i.e. bias caused by landscape
taphonomic processes, as a fundamental factor in the interpretation of
local and regional settlement studies that are based on archaeological
surface data. In order to establish whether settlement data acquired in
archaeological surveys are representative, survey archaeologists need
knowledge of the sedimentation history of a given study area. Of course
this also holds for erosion, the related counterpart of sedimentation. Re-
cent geoarchaeological surveys by Van Leusen within the framework of
the ‘Hidden Landscapes Project’ have gone into both aspects of sedi-
mentation and erosion in the mountainous hinterland of the Sibaritide
and that of the Pontine Region with a strong focus on the development
of new methodologies of dealing with this bias factor. The results of
those recent studies indicate that more effort has to be put into this as-
pect of archaeological surveying (Feiken 2014).
The second theme I explored concerns sedimentation as a proxy for
sustainability. Empirical evidence would indicate that the landscapes of
antiquity may be broadly categorized in two categories; stable land-
scapes with corresponding stable agro-ecosystems where traditional
environmental knowledge and limited technological investment go
hand in hand with traditional Mediterranean farming and reclaimed
landscapes where technology and centralized socio-political organiza-
tion are needed to sustain durable exploitation. Of course this is a far-
reaching simplification of reality, since, if we define sustainability in a
landscape archaeological context as the capacity of a rural economy to
endure in a given environmental and socio-economic setting, we also
need to study, besides erosion and sedimentation, other factors, such
as climate, hydrographical conditions, crop choice, soil depletion and
other forms of mismanagement as well as all kinds of socio-economic
and political factors.
Cultural ecological approaches as advocated by Walsh (2014) fi-
nally may help archaeologists to understand the cycles of settlement
and land use in the regional landscapes they survey in terms of sus-
tainability, as defined above. Eventually, this may offer insight in
the interesting topic of past human perception of and responses to
environmental change.
Acknowledgements
The author likes to thank the editors and the two anonymous re-
viewers for their helpful comments.
Please cite this article as: Attema, P., Sedimentation as geomorphological bias and indicator of agricultural (un)sustainability in the study of the
coastal plains of Sout..., Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2016.07.024
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