Land-use and Resources

Land-use and the exploitation of natural resources are closely determined by the geophysical and climatic framework described above. Four basic types of productive exploitation occur - arable farming, pastoral farming, the exploitation of woodland and scrubland, and the extraction and working of mineral resources. The extent of agricultural activity, of the

Map 1.4 Land-use and resources.

Exploitation of natural resources such as woodlands, and of particular crops such as cereals or grapes, is reflected also in the climatic fluctuations and shifts which took place across the period in question.

The modern Balkan regions have changed very dramatically since the Second World War, the result of both mechanisation and intensification of production, on the one hand, and of political reform and change on the other. In Bulgaria and Romania and some of the western Balkan countries, for example, collectivisation encouraged a considerable improvement in output and efficiency, although the longer-term social and economic results were less fortunate. In spite of these changes in the organisation of production, however, the patterns of land-use themselves remained very stable, a reflection of the constraints imposed by terrain, geography and climate - approximately 30% of the land devoted to agricultural production, with pasture and meadow amounting to one fifth of the total. In the western coastal regions the chief crops are grains (wheat and corn), industrial crops such as beet, cotton and tobacco, and, usually on a market-garden basis, fruits and vegetables. Vineyards are also a developing feature in the west, although they have been a traditional crop in the south. Similar ratios prevail in the central and eastern regions, except where the broader plains and alluvial regions permit a more extensive cultivation of cereals. The medieval picture is not dissimilar, except for the absence of cotton, the more limited surface area devoted to agriculture (for example, the modern draining of the Danube delta marshlands has considerably expanded the land available for cereal and other crops), and a much more fragmented pattern of production. The rich alluvial plains along the southern Danube, and the plains of Thrace, Macedonia and Thessaly, offered the main potential. Again, sheltered river valleys and depressions within the mountain regions permit settlement and agrarian production, and archaeological evidence for settlement density suggests occasionally fairly intensive exploitation of such resources. In the southern regions, olive and vine production on family or joint holdings was extensive; and from the tenth century at least the increased cultivation of the mulberry allowed an expanded production of silk in the central and southern regions of Greece.

Asia Minor has a relatively small total surface of plain - in fact, only 9% of the total area is level or gently sloping land. Modern Turkey has benefited enormously from modern mechanised techniques and the use of fertilisers, and this has helped expand cereal production and cash crops on the central plateau beyond the constraints imposed by climate and geography. Considerable areas in the south, west and north-west are dominated by a Mediterranean vegetation of deciduous, coniferous or mixed forest at higher altitudes (the tree-line is between 1,800 and 2,100 metres above sea level), and by scrub and brush in the lowlands. Whereas the central plateau is a region of steppe, with forest of oak and coniferous trees on the higher parts, the damper and warmer northern zone along the Black Sea coastline is densely wooded and has always been a source of timber. The main products in this region today are tea (in the eastern districts), hazelnuts and tobacco, with corn - maize - dominating as the main cereal crop. The degree of grain production increases markedly towards the west, with a greater proportion of wheat to maize. In the Marmara region, which is also the most heavily urbanised, a very mixed agriculture has developed - wheat, rice, tobacco, sunflower, maize, olives and vines, and silk. The Aegean zone, stretching down as far as the island of Rhodes to the south, produces a large number of cash crops - cotton, tobacco, vines, olives, figs in the coastal regions, with cereal and livestock (and a controlled opium crop) predominating in the hill country inland. The plateau, with its steppe climate and limited rainfall, is dominated today by pastoral production (a third of the sheep and three quarters of the Angora goat population are raised in this region) and cereals

-  some 40% of the country’s wheat is based here, occupying 90% of the arable. To the south, the Mediterranean region is dominated by the Taurus, stretching from Rhodes to the border with Syria, and is further divisible into three sectors - the fertile and intensively cultivated coastal plains (citrus fruits, sesame, vegetables, cotton) the central limestone plateaux in the centre (pastoral), and the western semi-steppe district of the lakes, where cereals dominate agricultural production. The eastern highlands, dominated in the north by mountain pastureland (beef and dairy cattle) and coniferous forest and in the south by wooded steppe (sheep and goats), is sparsely populated, with a limited agriculture dominated by barley and summer wheat. To the south again the barren plateau at the foot of the southern Taurus range is drained by the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, where agriculture - mainly wheat, vegetables, rice and vines

-  is limited to sheltered or irrigated valleys and depressions. The population is largely semi-nomadic or nomadic.

Apart from the introduction of different crops from the Ottoman period onwards (cotton and flax in the west and north, for example), the basic pattern of agricultural production from late Roman times through the Byzantine period was much the same, with the key difference that lack of modern technology meant that levels of production were very much lower, and the possibilities for cereal production on the central plateau were also very much more limited. But it is clear that the production of cereals - wheat and barley - on the one hand, and vines, olives, fruit (especially in the south-west) and vegetables played an important part in the economy of the river valleys and coastal plains in the north, west and south-west, while inland the cereal and fruit/vegetable producing areas were limited to sheltered zones and depressions on the plateau (such as the district around Konya/Ikonion) or along river valleys. In the uplands and on the central plateau pastoral economies had dominated since ancient times - horse breeding in Cappadocia, for example, cattle and pigs in Paphlagonia and Cappadocia, sheep and horses elsewhere, and long before the arrival of the Turkmen clans with their central Asian pastoral tradition (although the extent and degree of pastoralism before the Turks remains unclear). Medieval sources - Greek, Latin and others - all stress the arid or scrubland nature of much of the plateau and the waterless character of considerable stretches, the inhospitability of the mountain regions, and the productivity and fertility of the western and southern plains and coastal districts.

Egypt was the bread-basket of the late Roman and early Byzantine empire, although the coastal regions of Tunisia and eastern Algeria were the source of very considerable cereal production also, along with vegetables, fruit, olives and grapes.

After these regions were lost to Islam during the course of the seventh century, the eastern empire turned to Asia Minor in particular, and to the southern plain of Thrace for its staples, especially wheat.

The exploitation of woodland and scrubland has only recently attracted the attention of historians and archaeologists, and it is clear that in the middle Byzantine period certainly, and probably from late Roman times and before, there was a well-structured pattern of extracting resources in timber and other products from the western Anatolian, southern Balkan and Pontic regions under imperial control. Mineral resources were also extracted either through state-controlled operations (sometimes quite extensive), especially in the late Roman period, or through smaller, more fragmented private enterprise and state contracting in the Byzantine period. Iron was a key resource, and deposits in Palestine, the Pontic region, the Taurus/Anti-Taurus and the Caucasus, the eastern Danube, the Crimea, Macedonia, and the north-western Balkans were exploited in the late Roman period. Copper was extracted from Cyprus, the Caucasus and the Pontic mountains; gold was obtained either directly or by trade from the Caucasus (Armenia), by trade from west Africa, and directly from deposits in the Rhodope mountains and Thrace in the southern Balkan region. Silver likewise came from Armenian sources and from Cyprus, but there is some evidence that the silver deposits in Attica continued to be exploited, while in the later period Serbian and Caucasian silver was also obtained. It is possibly indicative of the proportions of precious to nonprecious ores available to the empire that there are many more place-names with the element ‘iron’ or ‘copper’ in them than there are with that for ‘gold’ or ‘silver’.