‘The Archaeology of la longue durée: The Piedmont of the Corinthia and the Cycles of Regional Occupation’

This seminar is about regional archaeology and how the patterns of human occupation over a 5000-year period tell a story about a landscape. The valleys of the Xerias, Longopotamos, Nemea and Asopos Rivers are properly a piedmont zone that is intermediate between the coastal plains of the Corinthian, Saronic and Argive Gulfs. Study of the long-term patterns of human exploitation of these valleys reveals cycles of occupation that differentiate this piedmont from adjacent coastal and mountain regions. Variation in form of settlement and in forms of agro-pastoral economies and study of the routes of interconnection illustrate the special character of piedmont zones in the long-term history of the rise and the fall of political economies in the Aegean basin from the third millennium BC to the contemporary times. This seminar will present evidence from environmental and climate studies, intensive archaeological survey, archaeological excavation, historical sources and ethnography to explore demography, the dynamics of settlement and occupation, and interconnectivity. Study of this piedmont is a case-study of a ‘small world’ within the evolving political economies of the wider world of the Aegean, the Mediterranean, Western Europe and the contemporary global political economy.