Landscape and vegetation change on the Iberian Peninsula during the Roman Epoch – A reconstruction based on Geo-Bioarchives

Abstract

Archaeological investigations expect that first strong landscape changes on the Iberian Peninsula based on Roman Occupation (Schattner 1998, Teichner 2007). Actual sedimentological investigations in flood plains, lagoons and estuaries do not reflect this development. They often show a decrease in sedimentation during this period (Thorndycraft & Benito 2006 a/b). In contrast analyses on sediments from roman dams (Hinderer et al. 2004, Solanas 2005) document massive erosion processes. The aim of this presented project is to reconstruct the effects of the roman land use system on vegetation and landscape development. Therefore different Geo-Bioarchives on several sites of Portugal and Spain – estuaries, palaeoriver channels and roman dams are actually investigated with a high temporal resolution using palynological and sedimentological methods. First results show, that the anthropogenic impact starts clearly before roman time with an peak in human activity during Iron Age (Schneider et al. 2008). During the roman occupation phase different effects are visible. The inland areas document a massive increase in vegetation change, while the coastal areas were stronger developed before and show only slightly and very local changes in land use and vegetation.