AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE ROLE OF SLOPE STABILITY ON ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE DISTRIBUTION AND PRESERVATION IN THE MIDDLE SANGRO VALLEY, ABRUZZO, ITALY

Landslides are a worldwide natural hazard of great significance. The International Union of Geological Sciences reports that landslides kill thousands of people each year. Worldwide, annual estimated costs from slope failure runs to tens of billions of dollars, and even small to medium-size slope failures cause severe damage and fatalities. Slope failures are not unique to modern environments. In regions of slope instability, archaeologists must consider the role that slope failures had in both the development of archaeological sites as well as their preservation. The most obvious disturbances to archaeological sites are rapid falls, flows and slides. However, other impacts to sites must be considered. For example, what affect does slower slope movement have on archaeological materials? How does soil creep impact surface scatter? How is the distribution of archaeological sites biased by slope processes? How did areas of high potential of slope failure influence ancient societal decisions on site location? To address these questions a survey was conducted in the middle Sangro River Valley in the Abruzzo, Italy. This study is a component of a larger multinational landscape archaeology program in the region that is combining archaeological excavation with geomorphology, paleobotany and survey. The terrain of the Sangro River valley is mountainous with the slopes predominately clayey marls capped by limestone. All modern and known ancient village sites were visited within the middle valley, their foundation geologies characterized and the data recorded in a GIS database. The surrounding slopes were also analyzed and recorded. This paper reports on the preliminary analysis of the field work and makes important suggestions for future archaeological investigations and interpretations in regions with dynamic slopes.