By
Lourdes López-Merino (organiser)
Antonio Martínez Cortizas (organiser)
Summary
It is well known that during the Roman expansion across Europe hydraulic engineering experienced a golden period. Examples of hydraulic architecture such as aqueducts for civic, domestic, farming and industrial purposes still remain in many cities (Segovia, Tarragona, Metz, Belgrado, Tivoli, etc.). Hydraulic mining systems are also very well known, such as ‘ruina montium’, which have left large-scale evidence of transformations of the landscape (e.g., Las Médulas). The work presented here focuses on less obvious hydric modifications, which were the indirect result of other anthropogenic activities. The combination of geochemical and palynological approaches in peat archives has provided evidence that, in many different places across Europe, environmental transformations associated with Roman mining, as well with other activities such as forest clearance, resulted in significant, landscape-scale, hydrological changes. These changes led to an increase in run-off and soil erosion in some areas, but also to the formation of peatlands due to a rise in the water table. At Cruz do Bocelo Mire (NW Iberia; Silva Sánchez et al., 2014), for example, the transition from the Iron Age to the Roman Period was a tipping point in the buffer capacity of the catchment in terms of water retention. As a result of a large deforestation event, which occurred between AD 210 and 240, and contrary to what had happened before, the mire hydrology started to respond more abruptly to changes occurring in its catchment. Similarly, in their study of La Molina mire, López-Merino et al. (2011) concluded that between the AD 20 and 140 it would have been used as a ‘piscinae’, marking a no-return point in its hydrological conditions, which led to a change from a minerotropic to an ombrotropic status (responsible for its present declaration as protected habitat in Natura 2000 network).
Keywords
Hydrology. Romans. Peatlands. Geochemistry. Palynology. Palaeoenvironment.