Environmental Constraints and Human Agency in Early Medieval Village Formation: A Geoarchaeological Approach in the Western Pyrenees (Navarre, Spain)

ABSTRACT

The interaction between human agency and environmental factors is a key topic in the archaeological study of early medieval village formation. Such interactions are particularly visible in the construction and maintenance of agrarian landscapes, which often become central to the local socio-economic development. This article explores these processes in a local context of the western Pyrenees (Navarre, Spain) through a combined analysis of documentary sources, toponymy, field survey, and core sampling for geochemical analysis. The foundations of the local landscape were laid down in the Early Middle Ages, closely related to the establishment of a village settlement and the collective appropriation of agrarian resources. The local geological and soil features, marked by the presence of thick and soft, mineral nutrient-rich soils derived from the weathered volcanic rock substrate, permitted the construction and maintenance of a terraced field system. This fact has been key for later landscape evolution at the local and regional scales, including the formation of a supra-local valley community during the Late Middle Ages, or the deep agrarian and demographic transformations that followed the introduction of New World crops during the Early Modern period.

KEYWORDS:

• Human agency
• collective action
• landscape
• geoarchaeology
• core sampling
• archaeosedimentary records

Acknowledgements

The authors express their gratitude to Pablo Mendiburu, Aitor Pescador, Olaia Granizo, Imanol Flores, Olaintz Calvillo, Bixente Hirigarai, Aritz Díez Oronoz and Joseba Otondo for their valuable contribution to this research project. We also acknowledge the comments of two anonymous reviewers, which helped to substantially improve the final version of the text.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Geological Map of Navarre, scale 1:25.000 (19/02/2024): http://geologia.navarra.es.

2 Government of Navarre – Demography (17/07/2023): http://www.navarra.es/home_es/Navarra/272±Municipios/entidad.htm?IdEnt = 1824.

3 General Archive of Navarre [AGN], Comptos, Papeles Sueltos, Primera Serie, leg. 55, núm. 1.

4 AGN, Comptos, Libros de Fuegos, 1366, núm. 1.

5 AGN, Protocolos Notariales, Elizondo, Juan Elizondo, núm. 276 (caj. 14.989/8).

6 AGN, Protocolos Notariales, Elizondo, Miguel Narbarte, núm. 368 (caj. 15.017/1); Protocolos Notariales, Elizondo, Miguel Narbarte, núm. 170 (caj. 15.018/1).

7 AGN, Protocolos Notariales, Elizondo, Miguel Narbarte, núm. 368 (caj. 15.017/1).

Additional information

Funding

This article is the result of the research project Paisaia arras bizia, funded by the Municipality of Baztan. The works were part of the project Archaeology of the local societies in Southern Europe (PID2020-112506GB-C41), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. J.N. is a Margarita Salas Postdoctoral Fellow at the Research Group in Heritage and Cultural Landscapes (Basque Government, IT931-16), financed by the European Union – Next Generation EU funds.

Notes on contributors

Josu Narbarte

Josu Narbarte is a Margarita postdoctoral research fellow at the University of the Basque Country. His research focuses on historic human-environment interactions and their material imprints in the landscape and the archaeosedimentary archives of agrarian lands.

Mattin Aiestaran

Mattin Aiestaran is an archaeologist working at the Aranzadi Science Society. His work focuses on the settlements and landscape dynamics of mountain areas, with a special focus on the Western Pyrenees.

Aitor Pescador

Aitor Pescador is a research collaborator at the Aranzadi Science Society, specialised in the medieval and modern documentary archives of Navarre.

Oihane Mendizabal Sandonís

Oihane Mendizabal Sandonís is an archaeologist working at the Aranzadi Science Society. Her research focuses on mountain landscapes and connectivity from the Antiquity to the Middle Ages, with a special focus on the Western Pyrenees.

Ander Rodríguez Lejarza

Ander Rodríguez Lejarza is a pre-doctoral researcher at the University of the Basque Country. He is specialised in the qualitative and statistical analysis of radiocarbon dates in archaeological contexts.

Eneko Iriarte

Eneko Iriarte is an Assistant Professor at the University of Burgos. He is a geologist specialised in humanenvironment interactions over the long term, and currently coordinates the IsoTOPIK laboratory at the same institution.