Brown, Antony G., Pears, Ben, Cucchiaro, Sara et al. (14 more authors) (2025) The Geoarchaeology of Agricultural Terraces in Europe:Construction, Resilience and Implications for Sediment Delivery. Geoarchaeology. e70008. ISSN 1520-6548
Abstract
Although the primary purpose of agricultural terracing can be assumed to be food production, it has been suggested that a secondary purpose was the control of soil erosion. In this paper, we explore this thesis with multi-proxy data from the TerrACE project, which studied 20 sites in a latitudinal transect across Europe. These sites show that terrace construction was often related to previous slope instability or erosion and that terracing maintained greater soil depths than the surrounding slopes. In some cases, it seems likely that the observation of landsliding that lowered slope angles and produced an accumulation of fractured regolith may have led to opportunistic terracing. The almost universal occurrence of multiple-phase sequences revealed maintenance and re-use that protected buried soil organic carbon. Three case studies show; headwater sediment and carbon retention by terracing, how terracing could be resilient to severe regional environmental events (eruption of Thera) and, lastly, the modelling of failure and sediment supply from vineyard terraces. Although there is no doubt that terracing reduced soil loss from slopes, whether the perception of an erosion risk was part of the conscious reasons for terrace construction is far harder to ascertain, but cross-cultural awareness of these factors does seem to be likely.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2025 The Author(s) |
Keywords: | agricultural heritage,archaeology,carbon storage,geoarchaeology,slope stability,traditional agriculture |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of York |
Academic Units: | The University of York > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (York) > Archaeology (York) The University of York > Faculty of Social Sciences (York) > The York Management School |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number EUROPEAN COMMISSION 787790 |
Depositing User: | Pure (York) |
Date Deposited: | 23 Apr 2025 13:20 |
Last Modified: | 29 May 2025 04:45 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.1002/gea.70008 |
Status: | Published |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1002/gea.70008 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:225704 |
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Description: Geoarchaeology - 2025 - Brown - The Geoarchaeology of Agricultural Terraces in Europe Construction Resilience and
Licence: CC-BY 2.5