ABSTRACT Mediterranean mountainous areas and their valuable natural resources have long been attractive to human societies. The Peloponnese (southern Greece), with its complex topographic and climatic variability, has been the scenery for the development of numerous human communities. The existing paleovegetation records from the region derive mainly from lowland sites, while the vegetation succession of the mountains is not clearly understood. Herein, we focus on the sediment profile of Rakita, a wetland located in an isolated mountain basin in the northwestern Peloponnese. We combine pollen-based vegetation reconstruction with detailed historical and archeological data and analyze them within a broader well-connected region of the Peloponnese, characterized by an extensive coastline and central location in the Mediterranean trade system. In particular, we contextualize the pollen data with the detailed taxation registers, cadastres, and censuses produced by the Ottoman and Venetian authorities, which recorded agricultural production and population. The high-resolution pollen profile covers the last 1100 years, and thus we are able to look at more than a millennium of socioeconomic change that witnessed a variety of political and economic systems that controlled the Rakita upland area. We are able to study how these different systems impacted the area of Rakita, which has sizable environmental potential for human exploitation, yet is not easily accessible, and therefore not the first choice for human actors whose goal was to maximize agricultural production of the region. We discover that a smaller scale non-imperial but deeply market-oriented political system of the late medieval period, such as the Principality of Achaea, was more successful in intensifying land use even in such isolated locations as Rakita than the large imperial systems of the Byzantine or Ottoman empires, even during their most intensive phases of growth.

The Gulf of Corinth (GoC), derived from a geologically young active rift, offers a unique opportunity to study changes in environmental conditions during the Quaternary period in a region where long sequences are few. Due to periods of isolation during Quaternary lowstands, the water conditions were not favorable for the occurrence of conventional palaeoceanographical proxies such as planktonic foraminifera. We present here the first almost continuous record of phytoplankton proxies (dinoflagellate cysts) and freshwater palynomorphs (green algae) for the past 1.1 Myr aiming to provide a comprehensive insight into palaeoceanographic variability between glacial and interglacials cycles. Core M0078A retrieved during the IODP expedition 381 contains a rich and diverse dinoflagellate cyst assemblage, sorted into two major ecogroups, representing alternations between marine and brackish conditions. Our results allow for the first time the reconstruction of the Gulf environmental history of connection and disconnection from marine conditions from late Pleistocene to Holocene (1.1Ma – present). Dinocysts and other palynomorphs (NPPs) suggest that the GoC was repeatedly isolated and reconnected to the Mediterranean Sea during global sea-level lowstands associated with glacial intervals. These combined proxies suggest that marine water flowed into the GoC during the eustatic highstands associated with interglacial intervals. The dinocyst assemblages show a close affinity to modern assemblages from the Black, Caspian, and Marmara Seas.

Agia Bay is located on the southeastern coast of Lemnos Island. The coastal area today is characterized by aeolian sandy deposits (dunes). The systematic investigation of a 15.5-m long sediment core from the coastal plain of Agia Bay aimed to shed light to the paleoenvironmental evolution of the area that prehistoric groups occupied. The exhaustive study of the faunal and floral remains of the deposits including benthic foraminifera, ostracods, mollusks, pollen, and dinoflagellate cysts as well as plant remains was further supported by sedimentological, micromorphological, and elemental analyses, magnetic susceptibility measurements, ERT, and absolute dating. Four main evolutionary stages have been identified since the Late Glacial. At the base of the sequence, the fluvial activity dominated the sedimentation in the area forming a small shallow wetland, while after 12,500 cal BP, a marine signal was observed at the wetland. At 7500 cal BP, the wetland increased in size and depth, whereas at 6000 up to 4000 cal BP, a connection of the wetland to the sea was established, and an inner lagoon formed. After 4000 cal BP, a nearshore environment developed due to the sea-level rise. Pollen assemblages record the occurrence of a mixed deciduous oak forest in the island interior around 6000 cal BP, while after 5000 cal BP, an expansion of Mediterranean vegetation, shaped by human activity, is inferred.

ABSTRACT The Lake Volvi area, part of the region of Macedonia (northern Greece), is a biodiversity hotspot, located in the central part of a major communication corridor connecting the western and eastern parts of the Balkans. The sediment succession from Lake Volvi is investigated here to provide a unique high-resolution pollen and geochemical record for the last 2000 years combining palaeoecological and historical methods, implementing the concept of consilience. The palaeoecological data document the environmental dynamics since the occupation of the area by the Romans. The vegetation changes reveal the development of wetland habitats and the variations of the mixed deciduous oak and thermophilous?mesophilous forests, as well as cereal cultivation, grazing and arboriculture, whose intensity varied over time. Archaeological data are available for the 1st millennium ce, but detailed historical evidence becomes accessible from the 13th century  ce onwards through Byzantine and Ottoman documents. Both historical and palaeoecological data indicate that the 16th century was the period of strongest population pressure on the environment of the Volvi region. However, for other periods, it is possible to observe disagreements between the proxies. We demonstrate that these contradictions can be resolved with a more complex understanding of the region's social?ecological dynamics.