| AFFILIATIONS | - 1) Université Paul Sabatier Toulouse 3, Toulouse (France) ,2) Université De Franche-comté, Besançon (France) ,3) Université Montpellier, Montpellier (France) ,4) Aix-marseille Université, Marseille (France)
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| ABSTRACT | The Mediterranean, one of the cradles of civilization, is a key region to understand the gradual artificialization of coastal ecosystems. Since mankind settled along its coastlines during the early to mid-Holocene, human societies have acted as veritable motors of change, exploiting resources at the land-sea interface and developing a complex maritime network of trade, between countries and continents. During the Holocene, the Mediterranean has undergone profound changes, acting as the backdrop for intense human activity in which the pressures on coastal ecosystems have gradually grown. While man has progressively left his mark on coasts, he had to deal with extreme climatic or meteorological events, such as coastal storms, submersions, drought and temperature variations. Sometimes defined as rare events (because of their high intensity, duration or spatial extent) or as intense events with high impact, these upheavals affected his subsistence systems and pushed human societies to adapt. Here, we will show, from Croatia to Lebanon, how Mediterranean coastlines are evolving spaces where extreme events have been concentrated for thousands of years. We will reconstruct, for the last 8 millennia, climate shifts, relative sea-level changes, the evolution of Sea Surface Temperatures, storm dynamics as well as phases of coastal submersion/erosion to compare and contrast them with anthropogenic records. Our goal is to be able to place the dynamics of extreme events during the Holocene into a long-term perspective of human settlement along the coasts. |