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Pastures, orchards and ponds: towards an historical ecology of the Rio Posada Basin landscape
For centuries, the Rio Posada has provided a link between Sardinia’s agricultural coastal plains and the sheep farming societies of its rugged mountain inland. Already a focus of Bronze Age settlement, a main Roman port and, later, medieval religious and administrative centres were located in its delta. Despite such historical time-depth, the landscape and settlement history of the Rio Posada floodplain and hinterland remains poorly understood. Still a frontier landscape, the Rio Posada basin is today known as both a zone of hydrogeological hazard and a niche of cultural and natural diversity. This paper takes the Rio Posada as a laboratory to develop and test the application of an historical ecology approach to frontier landscapes in marginal zones. What was the landscape in the past? How were land, water and costal resources used? How did people cooped with floods? By applying a context-specific and integrative approach, this paper elicits historical, environmental and ethnographic datasets to reconstruct of the interplay between land and people at a rural level. While the river has provided both a resource and a threat to societal development in the region, there is now indication that hillsides, floodplain soils, and marshlands supported diversified agro-ecological practices. A legacy of such practices survives in land divisions and toponomastics still traceable in rural areas. In addition, the handful of archaeological sites known are located in those areas which remained untouched by recurring floods that swept part of the Rio Posada basin over the last centuries or so.
Pastures, orchards and ponds: towards an historical ecology of the Rio Posada Basin landscape
For centuries, the Rio Posada has provided a link between Sardinia’s agricultural coastal plains and the sheep farming societies of its rugged mountain inland. Already a focus of Bronze Age settlement, a main Roman port and, later, medieval religious and administrative centres were located in its delta. Despite such historical time-depth, the landscape and settlement history of the Rio Posada floodplain and hinterland remains poorly understood. Still a frontier landscape, the Rio Posada basin is today known as both a zone of hydrogeological hazard and a niche of cultural and natural diversity. This paper takes the Rio Posada as a laboratory to develop and test the application of an historical ecology approach to frontier landscapes in marginal zones. What was the landscape in the past? How were land, water and costal resources used? How did people cooped with floods? By applying a context-specific and integrative approach, this paper elicits historical, environmental and ethnographic datasets to reconstruct of the interplay between land and people at a rural level. While the river has provided both a resource and a threat to societal development in the region, there is now indication that hillsides, floodplain soils, and marshlands supported diversified agro-ecological practices. A legacy of such practices survives in land divisions and toponomastics still traceable in rural areas. In addition, the handful of archaeological sites known are located in those areas which remained untouched by recurring floods that swept part of the Rio Posada basin over the last centuries or so.
Pastures, orchards and ponds: towards an historical ecology of the Rio Posada Basin landscape
Sulas, Federica (author) / French, Charles (author)
2016-01-01
Sulas , F & French , C 2016 , ' Pastures, orchards and ponds: towards an historical ecology of the Rio Posada Basin landscape ' , The 4th Landscape Archaeology Conference , Uppsala , Sweden , 23/08/2016 - 26/08/2016 . < http://www.arkeologi.uu.se/digitalAssets/447/c_447246-l_3-k_20160816_lac_booklet.pdf >
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
DDC:
710
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