From the Ground Up

Abstract

This paper explores the potential of GIS-based analyses of legacy survey data to inform discussions of settlement patterning, demographic change and the social organisation of agricultural production in the ancient Mediterranean. Legacy survey data represent an important body of evidence for understanding the development of past settlement systems, while their digitisation presents opportunities for novel quantitative and spatial analyses. By combining data from three contiguous intensive surveys from the Mirabello area of eastern Crete, this study investigates trajectories of demographic change and subsistence practice in the Early Iron Age (EIA) and Archaic periods (ca. 1200–550 bc), utilising GIS-based modelling of minimal agricultural catchments, and considering the relationships between communities over multiple geographic scales. This analysis highlights a transition away from clusters of small, demographically interdependent hamlets and villages in the earlier part of the EIA, toward the consolidation of nucleated population centres by the Archaic. The investigation of these developments contributes to our understanding of the scale, territorial control and management of agricultural hinterlands in the formative stages of the Greek poleis. The methods employed have wider relevance for the study of agricultural systems in the ancient Mediterranean, and highlight the important ongoing contributions of legacy survey data to theorising ancient subsistence economies.