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Landscape Archaeology and the Medieval Countryside: Settlement and Abandonment in the Nemea Region

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Abstract

This paper examines the processes of settlement and abandonment of the medieval countryside as revealed by archaeological surveys undertaken in southern Greece. The Nemea region, the focus of an intensive archaeological survey, serves as a case study. Early archaeological surveys approached this time period primarily from a historical point of view. Political history provided the textual frame while the archaeological data were expected to “fill in” the gaps of the historical record. In contrast, in the last twenty-five years the second generation of surveys has taken an active interest in the archaeological documentation of the medieval countryside. The settlement trends observed in Nemea are viewed as manifestations of a variety of political, social, and economic processes.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the Director and Co-directors of the Nemea Valley Archaeological Project, James Wright, Jack Davis and John Cherry, for use of data from the Nemea survey for this paper. Figures 1 and 2 were prepared by Rosemary J. Robertson and should not be reproduced without her permission.

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  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 810 Oldfather Hall, Lincoln, NE, 68588-0368, USA

    Effie F. Athanassopoulos

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Athanassopoulos, E.F. Landscape Archaeology and the Medieval Countryside: Settlement and Abandonment in the Nemea Region. Int J Histor Archaeol 14, 255–270 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-010-0106-x

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