UC San Diego

Erosion of soils due to human activities such as deforestation, pastoralism, and agriculture is a problem that has been recognized since Antiquity. Greece, like much of the of the Mediterranean world, is particularly susceptible to soil loss due to the arid climate and steep, rocky terrain, and many previous studies have sought to date and attribute the aggradation of soil to human activity, climatic changes, or a combination of the two. This study uses near-shore sediment cores from Antikyra Bay in the Gulf of Corinth, Greece, to understand the sources and timing of erosional events in the study area of the Kastrouli–Antikyra Bay Land and Sea Project. Sedimentological analysis and radiocarbon dating of foraminifera and twigs show that there are two major periods of soil aggradation in this record: the first occurred in the Hellenistic and/or Roman period (ca. 1900 – 2100 BP), and the second starts in the Ottoman Period (ca. 350 BP) and persists until present day. In addition to documentation of soil aggradation, two paleo-shorelines were identified during the geophysical survey. A local relative sea level curve constructed for this study suggests the shallower of the two is between ~7.7 and 8.7 thousand years old, while the deeper feature formed around 8.9 to 9.7 thousand years ago.