May 25, 2023 • 25 mins
In this episode, we explore differences in the landscape, specifically around locations in the three datasets (1463, 1700, and 1907) by comparing them with each other and with a dataset of 50 random points. The analyses show trends in the landscape of locations through time.
The maps and plots are available on the Helonaki website.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jen (00:00):
Before we arrive in Vostitsa, we traverse a high
mountain and then proceed for aleague along the fine valley,
which extends a long way to thesouth.
This is the way to go fromVostitsa to Dimizana and into
Upper Arcadia.
There are many villages allunder the jurisdiction of the
Pasha of the province andgoverned by sub-bachis or
(00:23):
syndics of his appointment.
The strata of the mountainsincline toward the north, as if
the earth had sunk on this sideto form the Gulf of Corinth.
That's Pouqueville writing ofhis journey in 1799 to Vostitsa
in his 1805 book Travels in theMorea, Albania, and other parts
(00:44):
of the Ottoman empire.
Which was published in hisnative French.
This is from page 75 of the 1813English translation by Anne
Plumptre.
I'm Jen Glaubius, and this isthe Helonaki Deep Dive, a
podcast about mapping andanalysis for historical and
archeological research.
In this episode, I discusssettled places, mostly villages
(01:07):
during the three time periodswe're looking at, by putting
those locations into context inthe landscape.
So looking at what trends we cansee in the landscape around
those locations.
And this of course is buildingoff of the last episode which
looked at the environment ofVostitsa as a whole.
(01:28):
And I just wanted to mention theplots generated in the analysis
can be viewed on the Helonakiwebsite.
A link to the page with theplots and maps is in the show
notes.
Let's dive in.
Before we get into the detailsabout the Vostitsa landscape and
environment itself, I first wantto talk about the relationship
(01:52):
between humans and theenvironment.
We know that humans impact theenvironment in many ways,
especially.
Today we build dams.
We divert rivers.
We build terraces.
We build all sorts ofconstructions.
We farm the earth.
We impact the environment.
(02:13):
And of course the environmentimpacts us.
Different natural processes,hurricanes, floods, landslides,
all of those things impact humanactivities and where humans will
do things in the environment.
But I want to talk about ageographic theory that was very
(02:33):
influential in the 19th andearly 20th century, which was
called environmentaldeterminism.
This theory was that theenvironment.
Especially climate in somecases, determined human culture
and activities.
That humans did things becauseof the climate, especially, or
(02:53):
because of their environment.
And this originated from ancientGreek philosophers who thought
that climate zones influencedhow humans act.
Which was racist.
By saying that peoples in warmerclimates, were lazy.
It was picked up by modernphilosophers and geographers,
especially in Northern Europe.
(03:15):
And used to justify racistbeliefs about the Mediterranean
and African cultures,especially.
So thankfully environmentaldeterminism, this theory is no
longer a mainstream theory.
But the ideas from it pop upamong racists.
So if you end up seeing anydiscourse that says, oh, they're
(03:37):
from this very hot climate, theymust be lazy it's entirely this
racist, environmentaldeterminism.
But that's not to say that theenvironment doesn't influence
human activities, it does.
But the environment does notdetermine what humans do.
Because humans have agency, wemake decisions about our own
(03:59):
actions.
There's no predeterminationbased on the place, the
landscape, the climate, theenvironment.
Instead the environment providespossibilities for humans to act
upon.
One way to think about it is asif the environment was your
pantry full of ingredients forbaking.
(04:22):
So based on where you live.
The ingredients available inyour pantry might differ.
So.
So you might have some morefruits or some other things, but
even if you have the samestaples of flour, eggs, butter,
milk, and yeast.
One person might make breadwhile another person would bake
(04:42):
cake or cookies based on theirown skills and what they have
decided.
And so humans will do differentactions in different
environments based on, are theretrees here?
How about available stone forbuilding?
Where are the streams?
Are there not many streams anddifferent things like that?
What is the climate?
What can I grow in this climate?
(05:04):
Other things like that.
But humans in the sameenvironments do not always act
in the same way.
Because human decision-makinghuman agency and societal
pressures, also play a part inthe human use of landscapes.
When we're looking at alandscape, the ways that people
use it will differ because it'sbased on their needs or on other
(05:28):
things like that.
NOw In the last episode Idescribed the landscape of
Vostitsa, particularly theterrain using GIS analysis of a
digital elevation model or aDEM.
In this episode, many of thetypes of analysis are the same.
So I'm using all the analysis Ihad generated.
(05:52):
But now, instead of looking atthe area as a whole, I'm going
to focus on the areas around thelocations found in the 1463,
1700 and 1911 data sets.
And I'll also be adding in acouple more analyses.
So overall, what this episode isabout is looking at the use of
(06:14):
those places.
So use of the landscape and howsettlement patterns might've
changed through time.
So to start off with, let's justtalk about a few of the theories
about settlement patterns inearly modern Greece.
An early theory was the idea ofheight zone, nation, or
demographic retreats.
(06:36):
Which was during unsettledtimes, especially during the
Ottoman period, Greeks retreatedinto the mountains.
And so there were moresettlements at higher
elevations, which is the heightzonation, that there were zones
where people settled becausethey were in the mountains and
thus safer from the Ottomans orfrom pirates.
(06:58):
But later, towards the end ofthe Ottoman period, or
definitely after the Greek warof independence that then
villages were moved moredownslope and closer to the
coast.
There was an analysis ofvillages in early modern Greece
by Wagstaff in 1978.
(07:20):
We can also compare that with, astudy by Forbes in 2007.
Looking at the peninsula ofMethana, which is on the Eastern
side of the Peloponnese.
Where there isn't necessarilymovement to higher elevations.
But, more to hidden places,places that are harder to view
(07:44):
from the coast.
So there is fear and insecuritythat's driving where settlements
were located, but it doesn'tnecessarily correlate with
elevation because there's otherthings about the landscape.
It's not just elevation, butperhaps how hidden a place could
be.
And I'm pulling, especially froma study by Seifried in 2015.
(08:08):
Who looked at settlement in theMani, which is on the Southern
part.
And Seifried looked atelevation, but also looked at
other factors.
Like How connected were sites?
How many villages were withinthree kilometers radius of other
villages?
So within, for each village, howmany other settlements were
(08:32):
within three kilometers.
Seifried also used distance tothe nearest accessible bay.
The Mani is a peninsula.
They have many bays.
As you'll hear about in just abit.
I instead use distance to thecoast since Vostitsa is not a
peninsula.
And the coastline makes moresense than distance to the bays.
(08:52):
And Seifried also looked atnumber of inner, visible
settlements.
So how many settlements couldyou actually see?
And I frankly did not have timeto run that for every single
one, because you have to do itmanually.
So I'm going to be looking atmany of the same things as
Seifried, because I'm interestedin changes in the landscape and
use of the landscape throughtime.
(09:15):
Let's talk a little bit aboutthe analysis.
We have three data sets.
There's the 1463 locations inthe Ottoman defter of Vostitsa.
Of those there were 55 knownlocations, locations that I
could actually plot on a map.
But only 23 of those were withinthe 1700 boundaries of Vostitsa
(09:38):
so a little under half.
And more were within Kalavryta.
But there was one settlementthat belonged to Kalavryta, that
actually is within the 1700boundaries.
So there are 24 locations in theanalysis of 1463 This is the
(09:58):
smallest of the three data setswithin Vostitsa.
For 1700 because we're using the1700 boundaries, there are 57
total locations that I've gottenfrom the Venetian map.
Also dating to 1700 of theterritory of Vostitsa.
There's 57, but two are excludedfrom the analysis because
(10:22):
they're named paleo Castro,which is old castle.
And so those were no longer inuse during 1700.
One of those locations seems tomatch up with a 1463 settlement.
Which is interesting.
And the other one doesn't andI'll probably revisit that when
I talk about population in a fewepisodes.
(10:46):
All right.
So 24 for 1463, there's 55locations for 1700.
In the 190 7, 1911 censusrecords, there are smaller areas
that are all within the provinceof Achaia.
There are locations within the1700 boundary from Aigio,
(11:07):
Akrata, Voures, and Krathidos.
So there's 63 total within thedata set, but four of those are
not within the 1700 boundaries.
Some are off on the west side, afew on the east.
And so in this analysis, I'musing 59.
So this is, this is the largestof the three, but only four more
than 1700.
(11:29):
In addition to all of thoselocations from the three data
sets.
I also generated 50 randompoints in the landscape, in
places where there were notsettlements.
So deliberately not close to anysettlements.
I did this because I wanted tosee if there are differences in
factors from the randomlocations where there weren't
(11:52):
settlements to the settledplaces that we know about.
Those 50 random points will beused in this analysis and you'll
see it in the plots, but not forall of them, because it doesn't
make sense for certain things.
And lastly, when I was examiningmost factors, I looked at a mean
(12:14):
value within one kilometer ofthe location.
So not just the point on themap, but actually within one
kilometer of that, because thatbetter includes the actual
settlement because thesettlement, isn't just one teeny
tiny little point, but an area.
And so one kilometer is probablya little bit large, but it gives
(12:37):
us a better general idea of whatwas going on in a settlement
than just trying to look at whatwas going on in a small little
point.
And once again, you can see allthe maps and plots generated for
this analysis on the Helonakiwebsite.
And that link is in the shownotes.
So go look because the plots arekind of cool.
(12:58):
All right.
So the first thing, I looked atwas the height zonation, is
there a change in elevation andmean elevation through time?
I looked at mean elevationwithin one kilometer.
And examined it using box plots.
If you look at the box plot, yousee that the 1463, 1700, 1907
(13:21):
locations have the same overallrange.
So the lowest and the highestlocations are in the three data
sets.
Although the quartile range,which is the box itself, and the
median, which is the line in thebox, all of those are different.
The random locations have alarger range and median close to
(13:44):
the 1463 median.
You see a change through time.
Median elevation gets lower.
It's highest in 1463 at 500meters above sea level.
It's down to 400 meters abovesea level at 1700.
And then the lowest, just under300 meters above sea level in
1907.
(14:04):
Median elevation, the midline inelevations, goes down through
time.
The quartile range, which is themean elevation for the majority
of settlements, it's smallest in1463.
That's the smallest range,they're all kind of packed
closely together between 300 and600 meters above sea level.
(14:27):
The largest quartile range, thebox, is for 1700, between 150
and 700 meters above sea level.
So you see some settlement lowerdown, but also slightly higher
up than in 1463.
And then 1907 is slightlysmaller in range, but it's also
shifted downwards to less than100 to 550.
(14:51):
So it seems like after 1463,there were settlements at both
higher and lower elevations, butreally in 1700.
And then especially by 1907, thetrend is for settlements in
lower elevations and some of thehigher elevation locations were
probably abandoned.
(15:11):
So that's elevation.
Let's think about ruggedness.
So this is how much up and downdid the landscape do.
The random set of locations hasthe greatest range of
ruggedness, including outliers.
The median ruggedness didn'treally change much between the
1463 1700 and 1907 sites, exceptit's just a little bit lower in
(15:34):
1907.
Slight trend for less ruggedlocations later on.
The quartile range expandstowards less rugged places in
1700 and 1907.
It's pretty compact in 1463.
And then it becomes less ruggedthrough time.
So choosing locations that are alittle more accessible, lower
(15:59):
elevations and not quite asrugged through time.
All right now let's think aboutlandforms.
Landforms have to do with thetype of landscape.
Is it a fairly flat, plain?
Is it on a sloping area?
Is it a valley, is at the top ofa ridge, which would be very
(16:20):
visible.
Areas that are less visible,maybe along a slope, especially
a shoulder of a slope, but it'sharder to build on.
Things like that.
And the streams, which wouldprobably be liable to flood.
If you look at this plot, whichis not a box plot, but a bar
chart.
You see that there are fewerlocations next to streams
through time.
(16:41):
And there are none by 1907.
There weren't many to beginwith, but less building near
streams and none at all by 1907.
So using different locations.
And new locations that you getthrough time after 1463, you get
them on slopes, in valleys,which would be fairly hidden, on
(17:04):
the plains, which would be morevisible.
And then on ridges, which wouldprobably be more visible.
But it would also be a littledifficult to reach, to actually
access that area.
The increase in locations invalleys and plains, which are
probably fairly accessible,could point towards a decreasing
need for security.
(17:24):
So as time went on, there wasless need to have your village
in a secure location.
So those are the location forsome of the environment
factors.
Let's look at a few other factors.
Neighboring settlements.
So how many other settlementsare within a three kilometer
radius, which is a little lessthan two miles And for this one,
(17:48):
the random data set is excludedbecause this has to do entirely
with human decision-making.
The other ones do too, but itdidn't make sense to plot out
the random data set.
From the plot, you can see thatthe least interconnected period.
So the period with the leastsettlements with neighboring
(18:09):
settlements.
Is in 1463.
If they have any villages withinthree kilometers, they only have
one to two and one outlier iswithin four other villages.
But that's unusual.
The 1700 locations are the mostinterconnected.
They have a range going betweenone and 10 other settlements
(18:33):
within three kilometers with amedian of four.
So.
The median value for number ofsettlements within three
kilometers is four.
That's a lot of neighbors formany of these places.
In 1907, it goes between theother two.
So it's more interconnected than1463, but less than 1700.
(18:55):
The range goes between one andseven villages are within three
kilometers with a median ofthree villages within three
kilometers So for this one,there's no temporal trends.
It doesn't change in onedirection.
It goes from least in 1463 tothe most in 1700 to in between
(19:16):
the two in 1907.
Let's look at one more analysis.
Which is the distance to thecoast.
So how close were villages andthe town of Aigio to the coast,
which Aigio is on the coast.
So it's the closest.
Looking at these box plots.
The random data set had thegreatest range of distance to
(19:38):
the coast.
They had one that was 20kilometers from the coast.
So almost at the very edge ofthe 1700 boundary.
And it had just the greatestrange.
Otherwise, there's a trendtowards locations moving closer
to the coast by 1907.
There's more settlement closerto the Gulf of Corinth by 1907.
(20:02):
In 1463 and 1700, they havealmost the same distance.
Except the median in 1700 isslightly less than 1463.
So.
There's movement closer, maybe alittle.
Lower elevation but overall by1907, people were living closer
(20:24):
to the coast.
In more accessible areas.
So, what can we take from this?
From all of these analyses thatI've described and that you can
go look at on the Helonakiwebsite.
There is a trend towards lowerelevation through time.
The settlements come closer tothe coast and they're on the
plains.
(20:44):
More of them on the coastalplain by 1907.
That's not the case in earliertime periods, there was a less
settlement on the coastal plainand close to the coast.
And that was probably because itwas too accessible, even though
it's a nice place foragriculture, it's also really
easy for people to get there Sosettlements in the two earlier
(21:07):
time periods, 1463 and 1700 wereless accessible.
This is very evident.
I drove around the Vostitsa areain June of 2022.
I was trying to match up placesfrom especially 1700.
And it was harder to reach theareas further south.
Further from the coast, moreinto the mountains.
(21:29):
And many of those are no longersettled.
So there was no place for me toactually get to, or it's hard to
know if I was there.
The number of neighboringsettlements within three
kilometers of each other,increased between 1463 and 1700.
This was due to an increase inthe number of settlements
(21:49):
overall.
So you're more likely to becloser to other settlements when
there are more.
The data set for 1463 is thesmallest, it's half the other
two.
So it makes sense that therearen't as many settlements close
to each other because therearen't as many settlements
overall.
That also means that within thisarea, there just weren't as many
(22:10):
settlements and they weren't allin one location, they were more
scattered.
Using different parts of thearea.
This gives us a general pictureof changes in where people
settled through time.
But keep in mind, this is justlocations.
(22:31):
And there's another aspect tothis that we'll get to in a few
episodes and that's population.
Just because there's asettlement, it could be like
five people versus a settlementthat had 200, 300.
So you can't entirely see peoplewith settlement locations.
(22:52):
You need to actually look atpopulation to get the full
picture of what was happeningwith settlement.
If it was actually more peopleup in the more remote distant
areas or down by the coast.
So there's another aspect thatneeds to be added in which is
population.
(23:13):
But we'll talk about that in afew episodes.
So stay tuned in.
In the next episode, we'll talkabout the town of Vostitsa today
known as Aigio and how the townchanged through time.
And now for some endnotes.
I looked at a few differentpapers that looked at settlement
(23:34):
patterns in early modern Greece.
There's been a lot of worklooking at very ancient patterns
in the archeological record.
But because we're dealing withthe early modern, I especially
use the papers by Wagstaff the1978 height zonation paper.
Forbes 2007, who had a critiqueof Wagstaff's analysis, and then
(23:59):
Seifried 2015, who brings thingstogether and I've followed some
of Seifried's analyses.
Thanks for listening.
Email questions or comments todeepdive@helonaki.com or ask
them on the Helonaki Deep DiveFacebook page.
Show notes with links toresources mentioned in this
(24:20):
episode will be available athelonaki.com.
That's H E L O N A K i.com.
You can also find ways tosupport the show now, including
merch, such as t-shirts, mugs,and stickers with the Helonaki
Deep Dive logo athelonaki.com/support.
My thanks to Patreon supportersat the geospatial analyst level,
(24:44):
Leah Varrell and Janice andJerry Farrell.
Your support keeps the Helonakideep dive going.
The Helonaki Deep Dive iswritten and produced by me, Jen
Glaubius of the Helonaki.
The theme music is Deep Ocean,instrumental by Dan o of dan o
songs.com, additional soundsfrom zap splat.com.
Thanks for listening.
Before we arrive in Vostitsa, we traverse a high
mountain and then proceed for aleague along the fine valley,
which extends a long way to thesouth.
This is the way to go fromVostitsa to Dimizana and into
Upper Arcadia.
There are many villages allunder the jurisdiction of the
Pasha of the province andgoverned by sub-bachis or
(00:23):
syndics of his appointment.
The strata of the mountainsincline toward the north, as if
the earth had sunk on this sideto form the Gulf of Corinth.
That's Pouqueville writing ofhis journey in 1799 to Vostitsa
in his 1805 book Travels in theMorea, Albania, and other parts
(00:44):
of the Ottoman empire.
Which was published in hisnative French.
This is from page 75 of the 1813English translation by Anne
Plumptre.
I'm Jen Glaubius, and this isthe Helonaki Deep Dive, a
podcast about mapping andanalysis for historical and
archeological research.
In this episode, I discusssettled places, mostly villages
(01:07):
during the three time periodswe're looking at, by putting
those locations into context inthe landscape.
So looking at what trends we cansee in the landscape around
those locations.
And this of course is buildingoff of the last episode which
looked at the environment ofVostitsa as a whole.
(01:28):
And I just wanted to mention theplots generated in the analysis
can be viewed on the Helonakiwebsite.
A link to the page with theplots and maps is in the show
notes.
Let's dive in.
Before we get into the detailsabout the Vostitsa landscape and
environment itself, I first wantto talk about the relationship
(01:52):
between humans and theenvironment.
We know that humans impact theenvironment in many ways,
especially.
Today we build dams.
We divert rivers.
We build terraces.
We build all sorts ofconstructions.
We farm the earth.
We impact the environment.
(02:13):
And of course the environmentimpacts us.
Different natural processes,hurricanes, floods, landslides,
all of those things impact humanactivities and where humans will
do things in the environment.
But I want to talk about ageographic theory that was very
(02:33):
influential in the 19th andearly 20th century, which was
called environmentaldeterminism.
This theory was that theenvironment.
Especially climate in somecases, determined human culture
and activities.
That humans did things becauseof the climate, especially, or
(02:53):
because of their environment.
And this originated from ancientGreek philosophers who thought
that climate zones influencedhow humans act.
Which was racist.
By saying that peoples in warmerclimates, were lazy.
It was picked up by modernphilosophers and geographers,
especially in Northern Europe.
(03:15):
And used to justify racistbeliefs about the Mediterranean
and African cultures,especially.
So thankfully environmentaldeterminism, this theory is no
longer a mainstream theory.
But the ideas from it pop upamong racists.
So if you end up seeing anydiscourse that says, oh, they're
(03:37):
from this very hot climate, theymust be lazy it's entirely this
racist, environmentaldeterminism.
But that's not to say that theenvironment doesn't influence
human activities, it does.
But the environment does notdetermine what humans do.
Because humans have agency, wemake decisions about our own
(03:59):
actions.
There's no predeterminationbased on the place, the
landscape, the climate, theenvironment.
Instead the environment providespossibilities for humans to act
upon.
One way to think about it is asif the environment was your
pantry full of ingredients forbaking.
(04:22):
So based on where you live.
The ingredients available inyour pantry might differ.
So.
So you might have some morefruits or some other things, but
even if you have the samestaples of flour, eggs, butter,
milk, and yeast.
One person might make breadwhile another person would bake
(04:42):
cake or cookies based on theirown skills and what they have
decided.
And so humans will do differentactions in different
environments based on, are theretrees here?
How about available stone forbuilding?
Where are the streams?
Are there not many streams anddifferent things like that?
What is the climate?
What can I grow in this climate?
(05:04):
Other things like that.
But humans in the sameenvironments do not always act
in the same way.
Because human decision-makinghuman agency and societal
pressures, also play a part inthe human use of landscapes.
When we're looking at alandscape, the ways that people
use it will differ because it'sbased on their needs or on other
(05:28):
things like that.
NOw In the last episode Idescribed the landscape of
Vostitsa, particularly theterrain using GIS analysis of a
digital elevation model or aDEM.
In this episode, many of thetypes of analysis are the same.
So I'm using all the analysis Ihad generated.
(05:52):
But now, instead of looking atthe area as a whole, I'm going
to focus on the areas around thelocations found in the 1463,
1700 and 1911 data sets.
And I'll also be adding in acouple more analyses.
So overall, what this episode isabout is looking at the use of
(06:14):
those places.
So use of the landscape and howsettlement patterns might've
changed through time.
So to start off with, let's justtalk about a few of the theories
about settlement patterns inearly modern Greece.
An early theory was the idea ofheight zone, nation, or
demographic retreats.
(06:36):
Which was during unsettledtimes, especially during the
Ottoman period, Greeks retreatedinto the mountains.
And so there were moresettlements at higher
elevations, which is the heightzonation, that there were zones
where people settled becausethey were in the mountains and
thus safer from the Ottomans orfrom pirates.
(06:58):
But later, towards the end ofthe Ottoman period, or
definitely after the Greek warof independence that then
villages were moved moredownslope and closer to the
coast.
There was an analysis ofvillages in early modern Greece
by Wagstaff in 1978.
(07:20):
We can also compare that with, astudy by Forbes in 2007.
Looking at the peninsula ofMethana, which is on the Eastern
side of the Peloponnese.
Where there isn't necessarilymovement to higher elevations.
But, more to hidden places,places that are harder to view
(07:44):
from the coast.
So there is fear and insecuritythat's driving where settlements
were located, but it doesn'tnecessarily correlate with
elevation because there's otherthings about the landscape.
It's not just elevation, butperhaps how hidden a place could
be.
And I'm pulling, especially froma study by Seifried in 2015.
(08:08):
Who looked at settlement in theMani, which is on the Southern
part.
And Seifried looked atelevation, but also looked at
other factors.
Like How connected were sites?
How many villages were withinthree kilometers radius of other
villages?
So within, for each village, howmany other settlements were
(08:32):
within three kilometers.
Seifried also used distance tothe nearest accessible bay.
The Mani is a peninsula.
They have many bays.
As you'll hear about in just abit.
I instead use distance to thecoast since Vostitsa is not a
peninsula.
And the coastline makes moresense than distance to the bays.
(08:52):
And Seifried also looked atnumber of inner, visible
settlements.
So how many settlements couldyou actually see?
And I frankly did not have timeto run that for every single
one, because you have to do itmanually.
So I'm going to be looking atmany of the same things as
Seifried, because I'm interestedin changes in the landscape and
use of the landscape throughtime.
(09:15):
Let's talk a little bit aboutthe analysis.
We have three data sets.
There's the 1463 locations inthe Ottoman defter of Vostitsa.
Of those there were 55 knownlocations, locations that I
could actually plot on a map.
But only 23 of those were withinthe 1700 boundaries of Vostitsa
(09:38):
so a little under half.
And more were within Kalavryta.
But there was one settlementthat belonged to Kalavryta, that
actually is within the 1700boundaries.
So there are 24 locations in theanalysis of 1463 This is the
(09:58):
smallest of the three data setswithin Vostitsa.
For 1700 because we're using the1700 boundaries, there are 57
total locations that I've gottenfrom the Venetian map.
Also dating to 1700 of theterritory of Vostitsa.
There's 57, but two are excludedfrom the analysis because
(10:22):
they're named paleo Castro,which is old castle.
And so those were no longer inuse during 1700.
One of those locations seems tomatch up with a 1463 settlement.
Which is interesting.
And the other one doesn't andI'll probably revisit that when
I talk about population in a fewepisodes.
(10:46):
All right.
So 24 for 1463, there's 55locations for 1700.
In the 190 7, 1911 censusrecords, there are smaller areas
that are all within the provinceof Achaia.
There are locations within the1700 boundary from Aigio,
(11:07):
Akrata, Voures, and Krathidos.
So there's 63 total within thedata set, but four of those are
not within the 1700 boundaries.
Some are off on the west side, afew on the east.
And so in this analysis, I'musing 59.
So this is, this is the largestof the three, but only four more
than 1700.
(11:29):
In addition to all of thoselocations from the three data
sets.
I also generated 50 randompoints in the landscape, in
places where there were notsettlements.
So deliberately not close to anysettlements.
I did this because I wanted tosee if there are differences in
factors from the randomlocations where there weren't
(11:52):
settlements to the settledplaces that we know about.
Those 50 random points will beused in this analysis and you'll
see it in the plots, but not forall of them, because it doesn't
make sense for certain things.
And lastly, when I was examiningmost factors, I looked at a mean
(12:14):
value within one kilometer ofthe location.
So not just the point on themap, but actually within one
kilometer of that, because thatbetter includes the actual
settlement because thesettlement, isn't just one teeny
tiny little point, but an area.
And so one kilometer is probablya little bit large, but it gives
(12:37):
us a better general idea of whatwas going on in a settlement
than just trying to look at whatwas going on in a small little
point.
And once again, you can see allthe maps and plots generated for
this analysis on the Helonakiwebsite.
And that link is in the shownotes.
So go look because the plots arekind of cool.
(12:58):
All right.
So the first thing, I looked atwas the height zonation, is
there a change in elevation andmean elevation through time?
I looked at mean elevationwithin one kilometer.
And examined it using box plots.
If you look at the box plot, yousee that the 1463, 1700, 1907
(13:21):
locations have the same overallrange.
So the lowest and the highestlocations are in the three data
sets.
Although the quartile range,which is the box itself, and the
median, which is the line in thebox, all of those are different.
The random locations have alarger range and median close to
(13:44):
the 1463 median.
You see a change through time.
Median elevation gets lower.
It's highest in 1463 at 500meters above sea level.
It's down to 400 meters abovesea level at 1700.
And then the lowest, just under300 meters above sea level in
1907.
(14:04):
Median elevation, the midline inelevations, goes down through
time.
The quartile range, which is themean elevation for the majority
of settlements, it's smallest in1463.
That's the smallest range,they're all kind of packed
closely together between 300 and600 meters above sea level.
(14:27):
The largest quartile range, thebox, is for 1700, between 150
and 700 meters above sea level.
So you see some settlement lowerdown, but also slightly higher
up than in 1463.
And then 1907 is slightlysmaller in range, but it's also
shifted downwards to less than100 to 550.
(14:51):
So it seems like after 1463,there were settlements at both
higher and lower elevations, butreally in 1700.
And then especially by 1907, thetrend is for settlements in
lower elevations and some of thehigher elevation locations were
probably abandoned.
(15:11):
So that's elevation.
Let's think about ruggedness.
So this is how much up and downdid the landscape do.
The random set of locations hasthe greatest range of
ruggedness, including outliers.
The median ruggedness didn'treally change much between the
1463 1700 and 1907 sites, exceptit's just a little bit lower in
(15:34):
1907.
Slight trend for less ruggedlocations later on.
The quartile range expandstowards less rugged places in
1700 and 1907.
It's pretty compact in 1463.
And then it becomes less ruggedthrough time.
So choosing locations that are alittle more accessible, lower
(15:59):
elevations and not quite asrugged through time.
All right now let's think aboutlandforms.
Landforms have to do with thetype of landscape.
Is it a fairly flat, plain?
Is it on a sloping area?
Is it a valley, is at the top ofa ridge, which would be very
(16:20):
visible.
Areas that are less visible,maybe along a slope, especially
a shoulder of a slope, but it'sharder to build on.
Things like that.
And the streams, which wouldprobably be liable to flood.
If you look at this plot, whichis not a box plot, but a bar
chart.
You see that there are fewerlocations next to streams
through time.
(16:41):
And there are none by 1907.
There weren't many to beginwith, but less building near
streams and none at all by 1907.
So using different locations.
And new locations that you getthrough time after 1463, you get
them on slopes, in valleys,which would be fairly hidden, on
(17:04):
the plains, which would be morevisible.
And then on ridges, which wouldprobably be more visible.
But it would also be a littledifficult to reach, to actually
access that area.
The increase in locations invalleys and plains, which are
probably fairly accessible,could point towards a decreasing
need for security.
(17:24):
So as time went on, there wasless need to have your village
in a secure location.
So those are the location forsome of the environment
factors.
Let's look at a few other factors.
Neighboring settlements.
So how many other settlementsare within a three kilometer
radius, which is a little lessthan two miles And for this one,
(17:48):
the random data set is excludedbecause this has to do entirely
with human decision-making.
The other ones do too, but itdidn't make sense to plot out
the random data set.
From the plot, you can see thatthe least interconnected period.
So the period with the leastsettlements with neighboring
(18:09):
settlements.
Is in 1463.
If they have any villages withinthree kilometers, they only have
one to two and one outlier iswithin four other villages.
But that's unusual.
The 1700 locations are the mostinterconnected.
They have a range going betweenone and 10 other settlements
(18:33):
within three kilometers with amedian of four.
So.
The median value for number ofsettlements within three
kilometers is four.
That's a lot of neighbors formany of these places.
In 1907, it goes between theother two.
So it's more interconnected than1463, but less than 1700.
(18:55):
The range goes between one andseven villages are within three
kilometers with a median ofthree villages within three
kilometers So for this one,there's no temporal trends.
It doesn't change in onedirection.
It goes from least in 1463 tothe most in 1700 to in between
(19:16):
the two in 1907.
Let's look at one more analysis.
Which is the distance to thecoast.
So how close were villages andthe town of Aigio to the coast,
which Aigio is on the coast.
So it's the closest.
Looking at these box plots.
The random data set had thegreatest range of distance to
(19:38):
the coast.
They had one that was 20kilometers from the coast.
So almost at the very edge ofthe 1700 boundary.
And it had just the greatestrange.
Otherwise, there's a trendtowards locations moving closer
to the coast by 1907.
There's more settlement closerto the Gulf of Corinth by 1907.
(20:02):
In 1463 and 1700, they havealmost the same distance.
Except the median in 1700 isslightly less than 1463.
So.
There's movement closer, maybe alittle.
Lower elevation but overall by1907, people were living closer
(20:24):
to the coast.
In more accessible areas.
So, what can we take from this?
From all of these analyses thatI've described and that you can
go look at on the Helonakiwebsite.
There is a trend towards lowerelevation through time.
The settlements come closer tothe coast and they're on the
plains.
(20:44):
More of them on the coastalplain by 1907.
That's not the case in earliertime periods, there was a less
settlement on the coastal plainand close to the coast.
And that was probably because itwas too accessible, even though
it's a nice place foragriculture, it's also really
easy for people to get there Sosettlements in the two earlier
(21:07):
time periods, 1463 and 1700 wereless accessible.
This is very evident.
I drove around the Vostitsa areain June of 2022.
I was trying to match up placesfrom especially 1700.
And it was harder to reach theareas further south.
Further from the coast, moreinto the mountains.
(21:29):
And many of those are no longersettled.
So there was no place for me toactually get to, or it's hard to
know if I was there.
The number of neighboringsettlements within three
kilometers of each other,increased between 1463 and 1700.
This was due to an increase inthe number of settlements
(21:49):
overall.
So you're more likely to becloser to other settlements when
there are more.
The data set for 1463 is thesmallest, it's half the other
two.
So it makes sense that therearen't as many settlements close
to each other because therearen't as many settlements
overall.
That also means that within thisarea, there just weren't as many
(22:10):
settlements and they weren't allin one location, they were more
scattered.
Using different parts of thearea.
This gives us a general pictureof changes in where people
settled through time.
But keep in mind, this is justlocations.
(22:31):
And there's another aspect tothis that we'll get to in a few
episodes and that's population.
Just because there's asettlement, it could be like
five people versus a settlementthat had 200, 300.
So you can't entirely see peoplewith settlement locations.
(22:52):
You need to actually look atpopulation to get the full
picture of what was happeningwith settlement.
If it was actually more peopleup in the more remote distant
areas or down by the coast.
So there's another aspect thatneeds to be added in which is
population.
(23:13):
But we'll talk about that in afew episodes.
So stay tuned in.
In the next episode, we'll talkabout the town of Vostitsa today
known as Aigio and how the townchanged through time.
And now for some endnotes.
I looked at a few differentpapers that looked at settlement
(23:34):
patterns in early modern Greece.
There's been a lot of worklooking at very ancient patterns
in the archeological record.
But because we're dealing withthe early modern, I especially
use the papers by Wagstaff the1978 height zonation paper.
Forbes 2007, who had a critiqueof Wagstaff's analysis, and then
(23:59):
Seifried 2015, who brings thingstogether and I've followed some
of Seifried's analyses.
Thanks for listening.
Email questions or comments todeepdive@helonaki.com or ask
them on the Helonaki Deep DiveFacebook page.
Show notes with links toresources mentioned in this
(24:20):
episode will be available athelonaki.com.
That's H E L O N A K i.com.
You can also find ways tosupport the show now, including
merch, such as t-shirts, mugs,and stickers with the Helonaki
Deep Dive logo athelonaki.com/support.
My thanks to Patreon supportersat the geospatial analyst level,
(24:44):
Leah Varrell and Janice andJerry Farrell.
Your support keeps the Helonakideep dive going.
The Helonaki Deep Dive iswritten and produced by me, Jen
Glaubius of the Helonaki.
The theme music is Deep Ocean,instrumental by Dan o of dan o
songs.com, additional soundsfrom zap splat.com.
Thanks for listening.
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