Exploring changes in land use and human impact in the prehistoric Southern Balkans and Northern Greece

Site counts and radiocarbon summed probability densities (SPD) are often used as proxies for prehistoric demography but can also be understood as a measure for the intensity of the human impact on a given landscape. For the Southern Balkans and Northern Greece SPDs show a marked increase at the onset of the Neolithic in the region (ca. 6400 calBC) and a subsequent high variability in intensity of the signal. Especially during the 4th millennium BC (late Neolithic/Chalkolithic) only low values in radiocarbon probability distributions and in site counts can be detected. With the beginning of the Bronze Age human impact resumes a gradual increase in intensity, again showing varying intensities over time. However, the underlying true trajectories of the intensity of human impact might be masked for methodical reasons. As an example, the decrease of radiocarbon dates for the time after the Late Bronze Age in the study region can be attributed to a lack of studies using radiocarbon dates.
Palaeoecological evidence, especially from pollen analyses might provide insights on the underlying patterns of human impact over time and thus be used as a comparison. Cereal pollen frequencies or micro charcoal influx might correlate with curves derived from quantified archaeological evidence. However, this evidence has its own limitations as it often only shows local signals. Thus, the nature of the human activities responsible for these signals is difficult to trace. Although climatic events have been made responsible for the fluctuations in human impact, this might be misleading. Causes for changes in human behaviour are difficult to infer from proxies of climatic variability.
This contribution aims at exploring the explanatory power of SPDs and site count evidence to understand changes in human impact in the prehistoric Southern Balkans and Northern Greece.