Approaching Landscape Transformations Through Urban Micromorphology at Bronze Age Palaikastro, Crete
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2017-10-06

At Bronze Age Palaikastro, Crete, archaeological sequences are defined by destructive events, which provide snapshots of cultural material in a particular time and space. Evidence for occupational phases is mainly based on materials found above floors/surfaces, while evidence for transitional phases is largely based on the accumulation of sediments and debris between floors/surfaces. Micromorphological evidence can correspond to both occupational and transitional phases and assist in determining the extent to which landscape transformations affected the urban site during particular phases. Two general microfabric groups are observable in the Palaikastro sediment thin sections: (1) more rounded, sorted sediment grains deposited gradually by coastal/river flooding or aeolian processes, and (2) coarser, unsorted sediment grains deposited rapidly by slope processes. Moreover, these two microfabric groups may be correlated with occupational and transitional phases, respectively. Group 1 tends to be found immediately beneath larger debris sequences and may be related to periods of gradual accumulation (and more stable slope conditions) that coincided with active use of the new site area and/or initial abandonment. Group 2 tends to be found after episodes of gradual accumulation and is representative of periods of rapid sediment accumulation, which indicate slope instability, and which coincided with gaps in active occupation and/or prolonged abandonment. While the causal factors of the gaps in occupation phases and intervening transitional phases cannot at this time be attributed to particular socio-natural pressures, based on this
micromorphological study, one may conclude that periods of slow sediment accumulation may have preceded gaps in occupation phases. At the newly excavated area of Bronze Age Palaikastro, it appears that significant, slope-derived depositional episodes occurred immediately after MM I-II, MM III - LM IA (possibly with a first debris flow phase occurring post-MM IIIB), during/at the end of LM IB, and at the end of LM III occupations.

Rachel Kulick Department of Art, University of Toronto, Canada