Mediterranean valleys revisited: Linking soil erosion, land use and climate variability in the Northern Levant

This paper presents results of geomorphological and archaeological investigations undertaken in several small drainage basins in the Jebel al-Aqra region of southern Turkey. By focusing intensive archaeological settlement survey in basins where securely dated sequences of sedimentary valley fills have been recorded, spatially and temporally linked, high-resolution records of land use and soil erosion have been generated. Sedimentary data show that throughout most of the Holocene, floodplains remained rather stable, allowing deep soils to form. But in the past two millennia, probably from AD 150–700, a phase of severe soil erosion was initiated and resulted in the deposition of 3.5–5.0 m of alluvial sediments on valley floors. Archaeological and historical evidence suggest that while these areas were occupied by agrarian communities since at least 2800 BC, nearly three millennia of cultivation during the Bronze and Iron Ages had relatively little effect on soil erosion. The intensification of settlement throughout the region and the conversion of upland areas to intensive agricultural production during the Hellenistic, Roman and late Roman periods (300 BC–AD 650), however, created the necessary preconditions for severe soil erosion to occur. These data are compared against modern and paleoclimate studies of the eastern Mediterranean, which show an extremely variable precipitation regime and the effects that it can have on erosion. A 400-year lag between the initial settlement of upland areas and the first evidence of soil erosion suggest that it may have been the intersection of extreme precipitation events with particular land use conditions of the Roman and late Roman periods which worked together to drive soil erosion.