ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on critical factors shaping agricultural landscapes during the longest period in human agricultural history, between the Neolithic and Industrial revolutions, roughly 6,000 years. The diversity of European agro-ecosystems will be related to the interaction between local environmental factors and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) expressed in applied agrarian techniques and practices, implying the development of rich bio-cultural diversity at the levels of landscape, habitats and species. This chapter covers part of the time period treated in the preceding chapter but continues further until emergence of the Industrial period, in the early nineteenth century. The chapters are complementary.
