Holocene climate oscillations, seismotectonic events and human–environmental interactions reconstructed from the Giannades palaeolake on Corfu (Eastern Mediterranean, Greece)

Abstract

The Mediterranean is particularly sensitive to rapid climate changes (RCCs) during the Holocene. An increasing number of natural climate archives revealed that socio-economic developments were influenced by such RCCs since the Palaeolithic. However, multi-millennial and high-resolution archives are still rare and often located in mountainous regions, where they do not represent environmental conditions close to human settlements. Here, we present a 16 m-long Holocene sediment record from the Giannades coastal palaeolake on Corfu, western Greece, which combines multiproxy analyses including high-resolution X-ray fluorescence core scanning with a robust radiocarbon-based age–depth model. A mean sedimentation rate of 1.6 mm/a characterises this lake record from 10.59 cal ka BP (basal age) until it started to desiccate around 1.8 cal ka BP. The environmental conditions of the Giannades palaeolake document a sensitivity to RCCs during the Early and Mid-Holocene correlating with sapropel S1 of the Mediterranean Sea and with the 8.2 ka event of the North Atlantic. Furthermore, signals of local to regional seismotectonic events were recorded, as evidenced by comparison with data from geomorphological and geoarchaeological studies of other coastal sites on Corfu. After a period of stability during the early Late Holocene, a two-phased desiccation started at 2.3 cal ka BP. This is coincident with a prominent seismotectonic event of the fourth/third century BCE, but also with the Roman Warm Period and related human landscape modifications.