Abstract
Two diseases — the plague and malaria — have had a large impact on the role between man and the landscape in the Troad. Since the eighteenth century, European travellers have repeatedly mentioned these two afflictions. However, recently, scholars have often overlooked or ignored the historical impact of these diseases. If one examines the evidence for the plague in the Troad, the sudden abandonment of so many towns becomes clear. The acute threat of malaria, in particular, around the swamp areas explains the function of the canals, some of which date back to early times.
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Ibid., p. 416. In 1834 in Canakkale, a quarantine was called for the first time in the Ottoman Empire. The designated building was located at the site of the present Tusan Hotel (Sally-11(11z 1996).
It is necessary to mention here that the 1988–1999 studies of the Byzantine graves from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries at Troia revealed that almost all the skeletons exhibited clear traces of malaria. Virchow also demonstrated that many skeletons from Troia and surrounding sites (Ophryneion, Hanaytepe) show signs of malaria (compare Virchow 1883). In this connection, it is also important to cite the report of L.R. Müller concerning malaria in Çanakkale in 1916 (Müller 1919 ).
During the course of fieldwork I conducted in the Troad between 1992 and 2000, I was repeatedly told by local residents that the death rate for children had been high. In many cases only one child of four in a family survived. This illustrates that the population in the region has not increased, despite the high immigration from Bulgaria, Rumania, and Russia since 1890.
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© 2003 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Aslan, R. (2003). The Relationship Between Man and Landscape in the Troad During the Ottoman Period. In: Wagner, G.A., Pernicka, E., Uerpmann, HP. (eds) Troia and the Troad. Natural Science in Archaeology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-05308-9_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-05308-9_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-07832-3
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