This volume reviews both physical and social aspects of this region, in relation to its environment. The Mediterranean has been subject to changing human settlement and land use patterns for millennia, and has a history of human exploitation in an inherently unstable landscape. It has been at the centre of vast empires since before Roman times, and is still frequently affected by volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. It is characterized and set apart from other areas by the presence of the Mediterranean Sea and its current environmental problems can have social and economic impacts for, or...

Based on a major research programme, and originally published in 1985, this book looked to provide an economic foundation for reinterpreting the Neolithic-Bronze Age sequence of South-east Spain in terms of emergent social complexity. The cultural evolution of the area had already been considered in terms of influence from the eastern Mediterranean but this book uses site catchment analysis to give an economic baseline for all thirty-five of the better-known prehistoric settlements of the region. Site catchment analysis assumes that people minimised transport costs in production and that...