INSIGHTS ON TOPOGRAPHY DEVELOPMENT IN THE VASILIKÓS AND DHIARIZOS VALLEYS, CYPRUS, FROM INTEGRATED OSL AND LANDSCAPE STUDIES

Abstract

Given the long history of human occupation on Cyprus, and the intensely disturbed and eroded nature of its landscape, the present-day topography has been linked to 102-3 years of human settlement and land use. Luminescence dating methods provide a chronological framework to interpret landscape processes and human-environmental interactions over this timescale, and coupled with landscape studies in the Vasilikós and Dhiarizos valleys, the means to test this assumption. The first case study examines the landscape in the Vasilikós valley, populated and exploited with regard to its natural resources since the Neolithic. The second case study examines the landscape around the Chalcolithic settlement of Souskiou-Laona where the underlying geology, geomorphology and environment contributed to the choice of site. The luminescence chronologies reported herein suggest that modifications in the first-order catchment hydrology occurred over timescales in excess of 103 years. It is shown that the present-day topography in Cyprus was initiated in the latest Pliocene Pleistocene, as a result of pronounced uplift of the island and the environmental conditions which prevailed, and that only minor modifications to this first-order topography have occurred since, with the re-working, and re-deposition of Early - Middle Pleistocene sediments over timescales of both 102-3 and 104-5 years.