Human activity and landscape change at Adjiyska Vodenitsa, central Bulgaria

Abstract

The discovery of an urbanised Iron Age settlement at Adjiyska Vodenitsa in the centre of ancient Thrace (central Bulgaria) within 500 m of the modern banks of the Maritsa River has perplexed the excavators. The rationale of investing substantial resources in land that was liable to flooding, indeed, eventually succumbed to erosion, seemed hard to explain. This paper attempts a coherent interpretation of landscape history that could account for the anthropogenic activities revealed in the excavations, and to illuminate the symbiotic relationship between human communities and their natural resources. The archaeological evidence for commercial bulk traffic and heavy industries indicates that this settlement was a river port. The Pistiros inscription refers to international overland exchange and confirms the supra-regional dimensions of the excavated data. The landscape analysis and the interpretation provided here outline how this politically and socially important exchange centre was affected by fluvial erosion. Analysis of the landscape dynamics helps to explain the apparent contradictions presented by the excavated data, whilst radiocarbon dates provide parameters for key phases in the local geomorphology. The city at Adjiyska Vodenitsa lay in a strategic position on a tributary alluvial fan surface that has since been eroded by migration of the Maritsa River. A series of geomorphological changes of the Maritsa River are constrained to between 750-395 BC and AD 990-1155, and may coincide with the abandonment of the city. The environmental evidence assessed here enhances understanding of an archaeological site of major significance for understanding communication networks in antiquity.