PLEISTOCENE ENVIRONMENTS IN THE MEDITERRANEAN REGION: RECENT EVIDENCE FROM THE PINDUS MOUNTAINS

The late Eric Higgs first carried out systematicresearch into the Palaeolithic of Greece in the 1960s. His work in Epirus included widespread field survey, the excavation of rockshelters and open sites, and, for the first time in Greece, a significant component of off-site work that focused on Pleistocene environmental change.

However, these investigations were hampered by several factors – perhaps most notably by poor dating control for both the on-site andoff-site records which prevented a thorough examination of the relationship between environmental change and the record of Palaeolithic settlement in the region. More recently, detailed geological and geomorphological fieldwork in the uplands of Epirus (allied to on-going investigations of the Palaeolithic record) has resulted in important advances in our understanding of long-term landscape dynamics in the Mediterranean region. Research has focussed on Pleistocene river behaviour, the sedimentation processes in rockshelters and caves, and on the timing of glacial activity. The successful application of a range of dating methods (including uranium series and AMS 14C) has provided new insights into the timing of glacial activity and phases of fluvial aggradation and slackwater sedimentation in the Pindus Mountains. In combination with the analysis of a series of rockshelter sequences, these records have allowed fresh insights into the relationship between climate change, long-term landscape processes and the behaviour of Paleolithic humans and this paper presents the results of recent work in the region.