Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations - Kootenay Local Agricultural Society

Figure 7. Parthenon. Albumen print by William James Stillman, 1869 (courtesy of
Research Library, the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, California [92.R.84]).
deposits of reworked hillslope soils in the valleys generally date from the
Bronze Age arrival of agriculture. Erosional episodes similar in outline, but
different in detail, occurred across ancient Greece where farming spread
out of the valleys and onto hillslopes.
Soils of the southern Argolid, for example, record four periods of postglacial
erosion during times of intensive land use. The first, from roughly
4500 to 3500 bc, was a time when thick woodland soils were widely settled
by early farmers. Introduction of the plow and the spread of farming into
steeper terrain led to widespread erosion around 2300 to 1600 bc. Hillslope
soils gradually rebuilt during the dark age before the rise of classical Greek
civilization. The area was again densely settled in late Roman times and
another period of depopulation followed in the seventh century ad. About
fifteen inches of soil are estimated to have been lost from Argolid uplands
since the start of Bronze Age agriculture. As many as three feet of soil may
have been stripped from some lowland slopes.
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