Paper short abstract:

Our analysis of both human and environmental dynamics showed that climate forcing is responsible for physical and cultural landscape modifications. The wandering of sites since prehistorical times in a large segment of the Ionian coastal belt of southern Italy can be used as a climate change proxy.

Paper long abstract:

In the ancient Chora of Metapontum, analyses of environmental dynamics and spatial-temporal evolution of prehistorical to Roman sites were carried through an integrated approach that, starting from a detailed geomorphological analysis, tried to highlight how socio-economical events can be triggered by landform evolution and climate changes. This study was performed in a ca. 400 sq. km large territory to validate human and territorial dynamics. A model of interactions between ancient sites location, geomorphic parameters, land use, and distances from rivers was constructed and framed within the most likely paleoclimate scenarios.

Site occupancy and destination change occurred through time as settlers and autochthonous occupied sites, often changing their destination. The preferential occupation of mid-altitude marine terraces, and the consequent spreading of agriculture on these territories, is likely due to the existence of well-developed soil profiles: colonists recognized that on these landform units there were the better conditions for the development of massive agricultural practices. The increase in farmhouses on marine terraces and the modifications of settlement distribution is likely related to the acceleration of alluvial processes. The role played by the increase in flooding occurrence in the coastal plain/floodplains of the main rivers in triggering the abandonment of these territories should not be neglected. Productive areas are preferential set along the fluvial incisions, thus implying that their setting is strongly linked to the presence of rivers, and of their lower rank tributaries, both as an intrinsic need of manufacturing and to facilitate the spreading of products.