ABSTRACT
As noted in Chapters 5 and 6, one of the consequences of agriculture is the production of enhanced runoff and erosion. In the early period of clearance, the use of fire might also be expected to enhance the erosion rates (Chapter 7). We might therefore expect there to be some relationship with the development of agriculture and of increased erosion rates. Erosion as a consequence of agriculture might reasonably be expected to be a major component of landscape evolution in the Mediterranean region in the period described above, and should occur diachronically as different technologies arrived in different locations. Indeed, erosion might be likely to occur in any location where human activity and settlement have led to the clearance of vegetation. The earliest reported example of this is the slope erosion noted around the Kebaran and Geometric Kebaran (see Chapter 9) sites on the Israeli coastal plain. Schuldenrein (1986) has noted that a move from mid-slope sites was probably due to erosion following increased runoff due to locally intensive land use.
