Mines, Olives and Monasteries Aspects of Halkidiki’S Enviromental History

Mines, Olives and Monasteries Aspects of Halkidiki’s Enviromental History Mines, Olives and Monasteries Aspects of Halkidiki’s Enviromental History Edited by Basil C. Gounaris Mines, Olives and Monasteries Aspects of Halkidiki’s Enviromental History First published by Epikentro Publishers and PHAROS books • Thessaloniki 2015 Edited by Basil C. Gounaris Publishing Editor: Dimitra Asimakopoulou Desktop publishing: Christos Goudinakos Copy-editors: Philip Carabott & Sarah Edwards-Economidi Epikentro Publishers, S.A. 5, Kiafa street, Athens, 10678, Greece Tel. ++302103811077 fax 2103811086 9, Kamvounion street, Thessaloniki 54621, Greece Tel ++302310256146 2310 256148 www.epikentro.gr • e-mail: [email protected] Pharos Books Greek Books & Academic Publications 2, I. Deliou Str., 54621, Thessaloniki Tel: 0030 2310 525462 Fax:0030 2310 525984 E-mail: [email protected] www.pharos-books.com ISBN: 978-960-458-613-4 ΓΓΕΤ Πρόγραμμα Αριστεία ΙΙ ΕΠΙΧΕΙΡΗΣΙΑΚΟ ΠΡΟΓΡΑΜΜΑ «ΕΚΠΑΙΔΕΥΣΗ ΚΑΙ ΔΙΑ ΒΙΟΥ ΜΑΘΗΣΗ» CONTENTS PREFACE 7 INTRODUCTION 11 Basil C. Gounaris Halkidiki. Landscape, Archaeology, and Ethnicity 35 Elisavet (Bettina) Tsigarida Ioannis Xydopoulos The Rivers of Halkidiki in Antiquity 71 Manolis Manoledakis Settlement and Environment in Halkidiki, Ninth to Fifteenth Century AD 109 Kostis Smyrlis Halkidiki in the Early Modern Period: Towards an Environmental History 123 Elias Kolovos Phokion Kotzageorgis The Fragmented Environment of Interwar Halkidiki 163 Katerina Gardikas Mass Tourism in West and South-West Halkidiki in the post 1950s 185 Eleftheria Deltsou Environmental Tourist Utopias and the Quest for Highland Halkidiki 199 Georgios Agelopoulos A Place of Inconceivable Beauty: The Housing Cooperative of the Professors of the Aristotle University in Vourvourou, Halkidiki 211 Giorgos Antoniou Mines, Olives and Monasteries Halkidiki as Natural and Human Environment: An Overview of its Representations in Art from the Fifteenth to the Twentieth Century 231 Glafki Gotsi Linguistic Evidence on the Natural Environment of Halkidiki: Oiconyms and Toponyms 247 Kosmas – Panagiotis Kyranoudis Palynological Ιnvestigation of the Tristinika Μarsh in Halkidiki (North-Central Greece): A Vegetation History of the Last Three and One-Half Μillennia 303 Sampson Panajiotidis ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS 323 MAPS 329 [6] PREFACE The importance of the environment as a factor of the historical process was acknowledged both by the French school of the Annales and British landscape history. As a distinctive field however, environmental history was shaped in the USA in the early 1970s, as the threat of an environmental crisis spread and environmental activ- ism came into being. Forty years afterwards it has grown into a vibrant multidiscipli- nary field that draws widely on both the Humanities and Natural Science. Environ- mental History looks at nature itself, its changes over time, and the impact human activity has had on it. It enquires into how humans use nature. It focuses on the environmental consequences of demographic changes, the growing usage of effective technology, and on changing patterns of production and consumption. Naturally, environmental historians also study how people think about nature in terms of culture and science. With few exceptions, hitherto in Greece nature has neither been perceived nor studied as an integral part of the national past. The importance of geography, climate and landscape in general has been recognised, while plagues and natural disasters have also drawn some limited interest. Yet, the thorough study of nature has so far comprised an insignificant part of modern Greek historiography. This is due to the scarcity of sources and perhaps, to some extent, to ideological reluctance. Byzantine official documents are in short supply and Ottoman archives hard to penetrate with- out elaborate skills. Reluctance is the outcome of a legitimate question: If history is a human science, then why should historians bother about nature – especially if the study of nature is bound to reduce the importance of the human factor, the Greek human factor in particular? To answer this question properly it must be pointed out that the environment is not an analytical historical category but a habitat where power relations are built. Therefore Environmental History is about power; about who will set the standards of exploitation and control access to natural resources. This is a very human question for any historian to raise. Given the problem with official sources in this part of the world and the need for comprehensive diachronic data in order to generate arguments about the longue durée, few Greek regions can have an elaborate environmental history. Halkidiki is one of these. It has been inhabited uninterruptedly since prehistoric times. It was an epicentre of ancient Greek history, indeed a war theatre between the Macedonian Mines, Olives and Monasteries kingdom and the Euboean colonies. In the Middle Ages it developed into the rich economic hinterland of the flourishing monastic community of Mt Athos. Because of this relation, unlike other Greek regions, its medieval economic history is extremely well documented. The same is true for the period of Ottoman rule, especially with regard to the highland villages that were highly involved in mining since the sixth century BC. Mining and coinage created a special bond between Halkidiki and the Ottoman administration and, later on, a remunerative relationionship with the indus- trial world. The agricultural output of the region was no less important for Thessalo- niki. Thus, large estates were given to cereal growing but were also advantageous for pastoralists and transhumant shepherds who appreciated the mild winter climate of the pegs. Because of its natural resources and diversified economy, over time Halkidiki has attracted waves of peaceful settlers and barbaric invaders: Thracians, Macedo- nians, southern Greeks, Romans, Huns, Slavs, Catalans, Yürüks, Jews and, in the 1920s, destitute Asia Minor refuges. Yet it was post WWII tourism that transformed the region beyond recognition. The beautiful Mediterranean landscape, the calmness of the monastic community, the sallow and warm waters and, most of all, the wide- spread luxury of summer vacations turned Halkidiki into a popular international tour- istic destination and the primary summer resort for the middle classes of Thessalo- niki. It was only natural that the unprecedented and rapid change of coastal Halkidiki, which should not necessarily be equated with development, brought to the surface some pressing questions for the locals: If the natural beauty of the coastal line was its most precious asset, then how should the environment be defined and handled? Is there a definite line between the environment as the appropriate scenery for summer vacation and the environment as a site of natural resources? Who draws this line? Is sustainable development a feasible policy when individual prosperity is at stake? This is exactly the kind of questions that Environmental History raises and this research project studies. The social side-effects of the recently initiated gold-mining en- terprise in western Halkidiki form an integral part of these questions but not the reason for this project. In fact the environmental threat in Halkidiki, though of a different kind, was acknowledged in the 1970s but was conveniently shelved. To explain the present “outburst” one should look back and investigate the making and the shortcomings of a diversified economy in the vicinity of a major urban centre and in connection to the changing patterns of settlement. This is exactly what our interdisciplinary research team undertook to do (among other deliverables for dissemination and the production of Digital Humanities tools), when we applied on behalf of the International Hellenic University for financing to the European sponsored operational programme “Aristeia II” (Excellence), run by the Greek General Secretariat of Research and Technology. [8] Aspects of Halkidiki’s Enviromental History In a period of eighteen months, the official duration of the project, it proved im- possible to prepare a global environmental history of the whole region. Instead, our academic team produced case studies that cover as many topics as possible over time; from antiquity to modernity, from Geobotanology and Art History to Social An- thropology and Historical Linguistics. Assistant Professor Sampson Panayiotidis pre- pared a pollen analysis that supplements and strengthens historical data on cultiva- tions. Dr Bettina Tsigarida and Assistant Professor Yannis Xydopoulos investigated how the environment affected the ancient colonisation and settlement patterns with special reference to the ethnographic map. Their research is based on archaeologi- cal findings as well as literary sources. Through the use of maps and literary sources, Assistant Professor Manolis Manoledakis studied water flow in antiquity. Associate Professor Kostis Smyrlis produced a review of settlement patterns and the environment in medieval Halkidiki. Assistant Professors Phokion Kotzageorgis and Elias Kolovos joined forces to study environmental changes related to demography, mining, and pastoralism in the Ottoman era. Associate Professor Katerina Gardikas’s research focused on the interaction between the diversified small-scale rural economy of the interwar period and the fragmented environment. Through interviews and a variety of sources, Assistant Professors Giorgos Agelopoulos and Eleftheria

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