Chapter 4 The Formation of the Kras Landscape from Prehistory to the Early Modern Period Dimitrij Mlekuž Vrhovnik and Tomaž Fabec Abstract The chapter explores the longue durée perspective of transformations of the Kras landscapes from prehistory to the present, viewing the Kras landscape as a result and medium of a longstanding and complex interplay between the history, social and economic developments and ecological dynamics. The landscape is treated as a matter of history; the chapter focuses on the series of its transformations and modifications. We introduce new datasets in the discussion of the long-term history of the Kras landscape by confronting two complementary lines of evidence. First, we examine the elements of past landscapes that are still preserved in the modern landscape seen on airborne laser scanning imagery and face it with the data from doline infills, which provide a diachronic view of the development of prehistoric landscapes. The history of landscape transformation from prehistory to the present is not a smooth, unbroken development; instead, it is marked by qualitative remakings and reorderings. Our concern here is with two significant episodes of modification. The second and third millennium BC is the period of large-scale clearance and formation of the cultural landscape of the Kras plateau, structured around the rearing of domestic animals. The subsequent major landscape reorganization occurred since Middle Ages, but especially after 1500 AD. These accumulations can be associated with the historically documented process of formation of the modern Kras cultural landscape, with the time of intensive deforestation, overgrazing and farming, which turned some parts of the Kras into a stone desert. Keywords Cultural landscape · Archaeology · Prehistory · Doline · Airborne laser scanning · Kras D. Mlekuž Vrhovnik (B) Department of Archaeology, University of Ljubljana’s Faculty of Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia e-mail: dimitrij.mlekuz@ff.uni-lj.si D. Mlekuž Vrhovnik · T. Fabec Institute for the Protection of the Cultural Heritage of Slovenia, Ljubljana, Slovenia e-mail: tomaz.fabec@zvkds.si © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 B. Fuerst-Bjeliš et al. (eds.), Environmental Histories of the Dinaric Karst, Environmental History 17, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-56089-7_4 81