Helmut Brückner

The focus of this article is to link historical accounts about former islands of the Anatolian gulfs of the Aegean Sea to geoarchaeological evidence. During the Holocene, prominent environmental and coastline changes have taken place in many tectonic grabens of western Asia Minor, today's Turkey. The Büyük and the Küçük Menderes fault systems are excellent examples for deciphering these changes. Since mid-Holocene times, the eponymous rivers have advanced their deltas, silting up marine embayments which had once reached inland for tens of kilometres. To describe this terrestrial–marine–terrestrial evolution of estuarine islands we coin the term " life cycle of estu-arine islands ". Besides other factors, such as natural erosion, sea-level changes, and tectonic activities, the delta progradation was mainly governed by riverine sediment load, which, in turn, was to a great extent dependent on human impact on the vegetation cover of the drainage basins. Based on historical accounts as well as modern geoarchaeological research it is possible to reconstruct the spatio-temporal evolution of the landscape. For Miletos and the Büyük Menderes (Maiandros, Maeander) graben, remarkable transformations have been revealed: the metamorphosis of the marine gulf into residual lakes (Lake Azap, Lake Bafa), the landlocking of islands (Hybanda, Lade, Asteria, Nergiz Tepe), the transition of the Milesian archipelago to a peninsula and finally to a part of the floodplain. A dramatic effect of the ongoing accumulation of fine-grained sediments was the sil-tation of harbours – a major reason for the decline of the once flourishing coastal cities of Myous, Priene, Herakleia, and finally Miletos, today some 8 km inland. For Ephesos and the Küçük Menderes (Kaystros) graben, the research focused on the former island of Syrie. Pliny the Elder (Naturalis Historia, c. CE 77) attributed the landlocking of Syrie to the Kaystros River – a scenario which has been verified by our geoarchaeological research and 14 C–dated to the 5th century BC. The local foundation myth according to which an island, presumably Syrie, was the location of the first settlement of immigrants from the Greek mainland in the 11th century BCE can neither be proven nor disproven for lack of archaeological evidence. The delta advance was the main reason why the settlement sites and the harbours of Ephesos were relocated several times from the Early Iron Age to the Middle Ages.
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Sediment cores from S Italy provide excellent archives of Late Pleistocene climate and vegetation changes, particularly from the Lago Grande di Monticchio (Allen et al., 2000; Brauer et al., 2007), the crater lakes of the central West coast of Italy, Valle di Castiglione, Lagaccione, Lago di Vico, Stracciacappa (Follieri et al., 1998) and the marine core GNS84-C106 in the Gulf

Abstract: This paper presents evidence of multiple tsunami impact on the near-coast freshwater lake environment of the Lake Voulkaria (Akarnania, NW Greece) since the mid-Holocene. Detailed stratigraphies are given for 10 vibracores from the western and southwestern shores completed by additional geo-scientific information from all around the lake. Sedimentological, macro-and micropalaeontological, micromorphological, geochemical and geophysical methods were applied to differentiate between ...

The Lion Harbour was Miletos’ most prominent harbour during antiquity. It can be envisaged as the heart of the Ionian metropolis in western Asia Minor. Originally situated in a bay of the “(I-)Karian Sea”, Miletos is now fully incorporated into the plain of the Maeander river, today’s Büyük Menderes.
In this article we combine results from historical and archaeological research with those from palaeo-geography and geophysics. This geoarchaeological approach offers new insights into the dynamic evolution of the harbour basin from the time of the marine transgression in the early Bronze Age (c. 2500 BC), when the area formed part of an island, until its final siltation by the sediments of the river Maeander c. AD 1500.
The Lion Harbour’s outstanding significance is clear from its strategic role as one of the closable war harbours of Archaic and later times. Its central position in the Archaic insula street grid, lining the agora and the main city sanctuary of Apollo Delphinios, made it a gate through which, so to speak, gods and humans entered the city; it was also the point from which Milesians left the city to start their sailing seasons or found their many colonies. The Lion Harbour is likely to be identified with the “Harbour of Dokimos” mentioned by the 1st century AD novelist Chariton (Chaireas and Kallirhoë 3.2.11)
The commercial relevance of the Lion Harbour, however, was quite limited in antiquity. Miletos had a series of other harbours that fulfilled this function: the Theatre Harbour is perhaps the oldest of Miletos’ harbours; it also served as a closable harbour in Geometric-Archaic times. Other important harbours are the Humei Tepe Harbour and the Eastern Harbour at the eastern fringe of the peninsula; one of them, most probably the Eastern Harbour, should be identified with the emporion, or commercial harbour, where the slave market was located. Together, this quartet might be equated with the four harbours of the city Strabon mentions (Geographica 14.1.6). Finally, there are the Athena and Kalabak Tepe harbours, both of only minor importance. An overview of the evidence for all these harbours is given at the end of the article.