On the origin of rural landscapes: Looking for physico-chemical fingerprints of historical agricultural practice in the Atlantic Basque Country (N Spain).

Clicks: 360
ID: 2625
2019
Article Quality & Performance Metrics
Overall Quality
Not rated
Combines reader engagement with the AI quality analysis. This article has not been analysed, so there is no overall score — reader engagement is measured and shown alongside.
AI Quality Assessment
Not analyzed
Readership in this journal
Popular

Ranked #73 of 637 articles by views in The Science of the total environment

Most read Least read

Bar heights use a square-root scale. Only the 120 most-read articles are drawn; the journal has 637 in total.

Mint this article as an NFT
Not yet minted

Create a permanent, verifiable on-chain record of this article on the Scimatic Network. The NFT is held in your Journament account, and you can withdraw it to your own wallet at any time.

5 SUSD one-off · no wallet required
Sign in to mint
Abstract
Evolution and change in agricultural practice is a major factor in the codification of social relations and represents one of the main resources employed by human societies to establish a durable relationship with their environment. Using a multi-proxy integrated approach, this paper seeks to decipher the long-term dynamics that have shaped agricultural landscapes in the Basque Country (N Spain). Social and economic indicators (archival records, toponymy and oral sources) are used along with geological core sampling (geochemistry, magnetic, palynological and carpological analyses) to reconstruct a diachronic sequence of human settlement and agricultural management in the village of Aizarna over the last ~1500 years. The oldest records obtained refer to non-agricultural human activities dating back to the Roman period. Later on, traces of agricultural landscape-transformation can be divided into four main phases: 1) the onset of terraced agriculture, defined by the clearance and terracing of previous forested areas during the Early Middle Ages; 2) a Late Medieval reorganisation, with new terraces being (re)constructed close to dispersed farmsteads, linked to the emergence of the modern rural landscape; 3) a new model of intensive polyculture developed during the Modern period as a consequence of the introduction of new crops of American origin; and 4) the mechanisation and commercialisation of the agricultural production over the 20th century. These results provide a valuable pathway for the investigation of currently inhabited rural contexts, and offer, for the first time in this region, an overview on long-term landscape construction in the Atlantic areas of the Basque Country.
Reference Key
narbartehernndez2019onthe Use this key to autocite in the manuscript while using SciMatic Manuscript Manager or Thesis Manager
Authors Narbarte-Hernández, Josu;Iriarte, Eneko;Rad, Carlos;Carrancho-Alonso, Ángel;González-Sampériz, Penélope;Peña-Chocarro, Leonor;Quirós-Castillo, Juan Antonio;
Journal The Science of the total environment
Year 2019
DOI
S0048-9697(19)32094-7
URL
Keywords Keywords not found

Citations

No citations found. To add a citation, contact the admin at info@scimatic.org

Comments

No comments yet. Be the first to comment on this article.