Évolution des paysages de la plaine de Macédoine centrale : entre géographie historique et approche paléoenvironnementale

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to show the interest, in a place such as the Thessaloniki Plain, to combine the geomorphological study and the paleoenvironmental approach in order to solve questions of historical geography. The careful scrutiny of literary sources indicates a fast stranding of a shallow marine cove but it doesn’t allow precise reconstruction of the rhythms of deltaic progradation since Antiquity. For the last 1500 years, the study is more complicated since there is an important lack of documents mentioning the landscape’s evolution during the Byzantine and the Ottoman periods. From the 19th century and on, traveller’s descriptions and detailed maps provide new information. The lack of descriptions for certain periods obliges us to lead a paleoenvironmental reconstruction of the landscape. For the Thessaloniki Plain, eight boreholes have been drilled between the ancient city of Pella, former capital of the Macedonian Kingdom, and the present-day shoreline. The chronostratigraphic evidence allowed to redefine the different steps of the outbuilding of the largest deltaic complex of Greece.

Keywords

• historical geography
• Thessaloniki
• geoarchaeology
• borehole