Tracing the legacies of anthropogenic landscape transformation in the Iberian atlantic margin: Historical and geoarchaeological investigations in the Bidasoa estuary (Basque Country)

Abstract

Human activity is a primary factor of environmental transformation in coastal and estuarine areas. The appropriation and exploitation of a given space and its resources is conditioned by socially driven practices, which are of a different nature depending on the historical contingencies and result in a variety of material imprints. This paper addresses the history of human-environment interactions in an estuary of the Iberian Atlantic Margin, and their long-term effects on the local morphosedimentary and hydrological dynamics. The study, based on an interdisciplinary combination of historical documentary sources, field survey, and core sampling, highlights the dynamic evolution of these interactions, with five main groups of human practices related to the estuarine environment: fisheries; port and road infrastructures; hydraulic infrastructures; land reclamation; and urban and industrial expansion. Hence, three main historical phases are outlined, with gradually increasing human impacts. The 16th century is characterised by a relatively low impact, based on the exploitation of fisheries and hydraulic structures. The 17th-18th centuries reflect an extensive land reclamation. Finally, the 19th-20th centuries are marked by the impact of urban and industrial expansion. These results provide a valuable pathway for the reflection on the manifold and dynamic nature of human-environment interactions, with multiple geological, ecological, and anthropogenic processes converging in the present-day layout of the estuarine environments.