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Observations on the Historical Ecology of Boeotia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2013

Oliver Rackham
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Abstract

This study was part of the work of the Cambridge-Bradford expedition to Boeotia. It gathers information on wild vegetation as part of the environment of, and resources available to, human activities. It is concerned with vegetation, with the structure, maintenance, and history of plant communities, rather than with flora, with individual plant species as such. The survey extends beyond the area of the archaeological survey (Mavromati), a highly cultivated area; in order to search for plant communities of a more nearly natural kind, this botanical study includes a much wider area covering almost the whole of the modern Boeotia (and beyond) from Mt. Parnassos to Chalkis. The land, geology, and soils are described as the essential context for the vegetation. Factors affecting modern vegetation are analysed, and the historical and archaeological evidence is discussed. It is concluded that, contrary to the general assumption, prehistoric Boeotia was a semi-arid land, both in classical and late Turkish times. The main features were very much as they are now, but this was not necessarily constant.

Type
Research Article
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 78 , November 1983 , pp. 291 - 351
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1983

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References

Acknowledgements. This work formed part of a programme of archaeological survey organized by the Universities of Cambridge and Bradford and sponsored by the British School at Athens. I am much indebted to Professor Anthony Snodgrass and Dr. John Bintliff for inviting me to take part and for their support and encouragement in the field and in may other ways. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the enthusiastic companionship of Dr. Margaret Atherden: a specialist in pollen analysis, she contributed very extensively by insight and observation to the ecological field-work on which this paper is based; her perseverance as explorer and skill as motorist took us to many remote and instructive places. Dr. Clifford Slaughter sought out local information on land tenure and woodcutting and was most helpful in other ways. The parallels from Crete in this paper depend on my work in that island at the invitation, and with the generous help, of Professor Peter Warren and Miss Jennifer Moody. All these persons kindly read the draft of this paper and made many useful comments. The section on pollen analysis was revised in consultation with Dr. Judith Turner. I am indebted also to the kindly assistance of the people of Mavrommati and of many other members of the expedition.

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63 The accompanying photograph of Pyrgos in 1939 shows that here, too, trees have grown up since that date, but most of these are an artificial plantation; this arid north side of Copais is still severely browsed and its wild vegetation has evidently changed little in forty years.

64 Wallace, loc. cit. (n. 2).

65 Statistics of what percentage of Greece is ‘forest’ are very sensitive to nuances of definition and should be treated with caution.

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75 Ulrichs (see Table 4) i 192.

76 K. G. Fiedler (see Table 4) 127.

77 Life of Sulla xx 4.

78 De vita Graeciae, under Anthedon.

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81 Ibid, xxxix 2.

82 Cartloads of birch have been expended over four centuries on beating into schoolboys the notion that πρίνος meant ‘holm-oak’. Theophrastus makes it perfectly clear that πρίνος, like the modern πρι;νάρι, meant ‘prickly-oak’; the commonest of the several words for holm-oak was ἀρία (Historia plantarum III xvi 1). All modern records of holm-oak in Greece should be scrutinized: foreigners, led astray by this mistranslation, commonly report large prickly-oak trees as being holm-oaks.

83 Description of Greece ix xxiv 4.

84 Ibid, xix 2.

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86 Description of Greece ix xxiii 3.

87 Rackham, op. cit. (n. 54) 133. In France wild swine are said to be most abundant in the maquis of the Mediterranean coastlands: Reder, J., ‘Des astuces pour chasser la bête noire’, Chasseur français (Janvier 1982) 38–40Google Scholar.

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137 Fiedler 132.

138 Leake.

139 Leake; Ulrichs i 228.

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142 Wheler 334, 346, 412.

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149 Ross i 111.

150 Vischer 577.

151 Clarke II iii 97.

152 Leake ii 491.

153 Ross ii 197.

154 Vischer 557–8.

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165 Wheler 446.

166 Wheler 422–3.

167 Wheler 465.

168 Wheler 473.

169 Wheler 446, 461.

170 Thompson i 361.

171 Bartholdy ii 163.

172 Clarke II ii 781; Dodwell i 513; Hobhouse 371.

173 Dodwell i 284–5; see also Holland 405, Fiedler 95. Resining of wine, though less widespread in Greece than now, was already practised in Levadia (Dodwell i 212).

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175 Clarke II ii 762; Hobhouse 478; Holland 419; Ross i; Fiedler 218.

176 Ulrichs i 2.

177 Dodwell i 504; Leake; Hobhouse 285–7, 435.

178 Dodwell i 537–9; Hobhouse 401, 417.

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180 Ross i 98.

181 Dodwell i 259; Leake.

182 Dodwell ii 155; Leake.

183 Ulrichs ii 31.

184 Pouqueville v 178.

185 Forchhammer 26, 33.

186 Wyse 231.

187 Neumann and Partsch, op. cit. (n. 40) 359.

188 Wheler 218.

189 Wheler 474, 478.

190 Beaujour 108.

191 Ulrichs i 118.

192 Dodwell, Views; Hettner 212.

193 Ulrichs i 146.

194 Holland; Wyse 74–5.

195 Leake.

196 Clarke II iii 109.

197 Ulrichs ii 92–9.

198 Welcker 39.

199 Dodwell i 282; Hobhouse 473.

200 200 Mure i 264; Schaub 131.

201 Dodwell i 487, 498; Leake 420; Hobhouse 400.

202 Ross i 29.

203 Ulrichs ii 92.

204 e.g. Welcker 39.

205 Fiedler 516.

206 Ulrichs i 120.

207 Ulrichs i 179 ff; Welcker 36.

208 Ulrichs i 197.

209 Pouqueville iv 187. Dug-out boats were also used at sea; among his other escapades, du Loir crossed to Euboea in a μονόξυλον (p. 325).

210 Ulrichs i 108 ff.

211 Aristophanes, Achamians 882–3.

212 e.g. Dodwell i 237; Gell; Fiedler 103; Vischer 580.

213 Ulrichs i 200.

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215 Dodwell i 212.

216 Vischer 500–1.

217 Foreign visitors, even in the 1830s, repeatedly tried to persuade the Government to drain the lake, at the same time as regretting that there was already too much arable land to be fully used.

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234 It might be argued that the core happened to have been taken from a spot that for some reason was locally unfavourable for peat formation. This possibility could only be disproved by a detailed stratigraphic survey; however, Dr. Atherden and I, as well as Dr. Turner, have searched the Copais ditches diligently for peat, and it is not of general occurrence at such depths.

235 J. L. Bintliff, op. cit. (n. 3) 80–3, has argued, on the contrary, that the bed of Copais at this time was exposed, slightly dissected in its topography, and covered with ‘magnificent oak forest’. This argument is based on the subsequent decline of oak and rise of grass pollen; Bintliff, interpreting the Gramineae pollen as that of dry-land grasses (and cereals), attributes the change to ‘deforestation’ of the basin floor by Neolithic agriculture. He does not, however, mention the probability that much of the increased grass pollen is that of Phragmites, known to have been one of the commonest plants of the Copais fen in historic times. Against Bintliff's hypothesis it may be urged that if the bed of Copais in general was dry enough for trees, and especially oaks, to grow, it could not have been wet enough for pollen to have been preserved, still less for a stratified deposit of lake clay to have accumulated. Such a deposit would have been formed, if at all, only in small lakes in hollows in the basin floor. Even if, by good fortune, Greig and Turner happened to hit upon the site of such a depression for taking their core, we should expect—because of the small extent of the lakelet—that much of the pollen would have come from its fringing reed-beds: there would be a large percentage of Cyperaceae and Typha or Sparganium, and the Gramineae count would be increased by a large percentage of Phragmites. This is not so. I find the Bintliff hypothesis difficult to reconcile with the pollen evidence; if tenable at all, it would depend on complex geomorphological changes which could only be established by detailed stratigraphical survey.

236 Rackham, loc. cit. (n. 42).

237 Graikiotis, loc. cit. (n. 51); Harris, D. R. and Vita-Finzi, C., ‘Kokkinopilos—a Greek Badland’, Geographical Journal 134 (1968) 537–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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240 Near Marathon (Attica) a highway robbery took place in 1833 in ‘a narrow winding holloway’ (Ross ii 155–6). Mure found a hollow-way near Davlia which he identified with the Split Way (ὁδὸς σχιστή) of Oedipus (i 204).

241 Keele, flight 64838 (see n. 67).

242 Turrill, op. cit. (n. 24).

243 The monoclimax theory is criticized in more detail by Forbes and Koster, loc. cit. (n. 58).

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251 Latin names are given as in Flora Europaea (Cambridge, 5 volumes, 1964–80).Google Scholar Some well-known synonyms are given in parentheses.

252 Most vernacular plant names are of genera rather than species. Where the English name is marked* the plant so named in England is a different species or subspecies from that occurring in Greece, though usually of the same genus.

253 This is not intended as a complete or authoritative list of Greek names. I am indebted to Miss J. A. Moody for many of them.

254 T tree c conifer

TS tree or shrub e evergreen broad-leaved

S shrub d deciduous

U undershrub p perinnial

WC woody climber a annual

G grass

th thistle or thistle-like plant

H herb (i.e a plant which is not woody) other than a grass or thistle

255 This word also includes Arundo donax, the giant reed, not important in Boeotia.

256 The common bramble of Boeotia, although identified by Flora Europaea as R. ulmifolius, is markedly different from that species as found in England.