The Environmental History of the Navazo Agroecosystem in Late Holocene Sand Bodies Along the Atlantic Coast of Andalusia, Spain

ABSTRACT

Since the late Spanish Enlightenment, the agroecosystem of the Atlantic coast of Andalusia, through which coastal dune systems are cultivated via sunken gardens between sand berms, have attracted scholarly attention. The environmental history of these systems, known as Navazo, is the focus of this article. Through analysis of historical aerial photographs, we identify eight areas in which traditional Navazo land use was practiced. By studying landscape diversity and historical documentation we identify key aspects of the emergence and evolution of this agroecosystem. The results of this study indicate that Navazos originated through a combination of the natural properties offered by the region's coastal dune geomorphology, which was cultivated as vineyards since ancient times, as well as external cultural influences. Coinciding with the popularisation of potato consumption in the eighteenth century, earlier vineyards were, in some cases, completely replaced by Navazos. Due to transformations in traditional land use practices, created a contemporary version of the Navazo. The location and physical configuration of the Navazos, meanwhile, display strong similarities with archaeological remains of Plot-and-Berm agroecosystems from the southeastern Mediterranean dating from the Early Islamic period. This study presents evidence to better understand the function, cropping practices and irrigation of these systems. .

KEYWORDS:

• Traditional agroecosystems
• sand agriculture
• Doñana dunes
• cultural landscape
• ‌Navazo
• Andalusian Atlantic coast

Acknowledgements

I would like to especially thank the many elderly farmers who shared their deep knowledge of the Navazo agroecosystems and their traditional cultivation. I would also like to thank the Municipal Archives of Sanlúcar de Barrameda, as well as the historian and doctoral student Luis Parejo Fernández for his contribution and transcription of the first written reference about the Navazo agroecosystem. I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Dr. Joel Roskin for his invitation to the workshop at Bar-Ilan University (February 6th–8th 2023) entitled ‘Continuity and Discontinuity of Agrotechnological Transfer in the Eastern Mediterranean Region between Late Antiquity and Early Modern Times Plot-and-Berm Agroecosystems as a Case Study’ (https://ancient-agriculture-in-sand.com/) funded by Israel Science Foundation grant 1136/22. This article emerges as a result of this meeting.

Disclosure Statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ruben Sánchez

Ruben Sánchez holds a degree in Agricultural Engineering from the University of Almería, a Master's degree in Agroecology from the International University of Andalusia, and a PhD in Natural Resources and Sustainability from the University of Córdoba. He currently works as a postdoctoral researcher at Bar Ilan University, Israel specializing in the study of traditional agroecosystems, with a particular focus on “plot and berm” systems in Iberia.

Joel Roskin

Joel Roskin is a associate professor in Quaternary studies and geomorphology at the Dept of Environment, Planning and Sustainability, Bar-Ilan University, Israel where he heads the portable luminescence and sedimentology laboratory. He focuses on utilisations of port-OSL profiling, and has published extensively on geoarchaeology, military geosciences, aeolian-fluvial interactions and coastal and inland aeolian archives.

Itamar Taxel

Itamar Taxel received his PhD in archaeology from Tel Aviv University in 2011. Currently, he is the head of the Pottery Specialisations Branch at the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). His fields of specialisation include various aspects of the material culture, settlement patterns and economy of southern Levantine populations in the classical and Islamic periods.

Peter J. Brown

Peter J. Brown is a landscape archaeologist specialising in the medieval period in several areas across Eurasia. He was awarded his PhD from Durham University in 2020 and has held postdoctoral positions or fellowships at the Palace Museum Archaeological Institute, the German Archaeological Institute and Radboud University. His recent research investigates aspects of Middle Eastern irrigation and water management systems.