Geoarchaeology REVIEW ARTICLE The Mediterranean Valleys Revisited John Bintliff Archaeology Department, Edinburgh University, Edinburgh, UK Correspondence: John Bintliff (johnlbintliff@gmail.com) Received: 24 June 2024 | Revised: 29 October 2024 | Accepted: 1 November 2024 Scientific Editor: Kevin Walsh Keywords: alluviation | climate change | erosion | human impact | Mediterranean | sea level ABSTRACT The publication of The Mediterranean Valleys by Claudio Vita‐Finzi in 1969 produced a radical change in research perspectives for our understanding of the timing and causation of erosional and depositional sequences in this macro‐region. This article will trace the debates that arose from this book and outline our current understanding of the interaction between human impact, short‐ and long‐term climatic fluctuations and landscape variability in moulding the development of Mediterranean surface landforms during the Holocene era. 1 | Introduction—Vita‐Finzi's Legacy The Mediterranean region possesses a climate, traditional land use and geology, which makes it one of the Earth's landscape zones most prone to erosion (Lewin, Macklin, and Woodward 1995, Introduction). Since Antiquity and into the present day, it has been, and still is, commonly accepted that the removal of soil, the levelling of hillslopes for land use and construction and the infill of coastal bays by prograding river deltas have been a continuous process, and one in which human impact was the prime cause (cf. Plato, Critias 110–111, Attenborough 1987, Hughes 2015). Then, in 1969, a remarkable, slim volume appeared from Cambridge University Press that would change everything in the scientific study of Mediterranean landscape change. An outgrowth from his doctoral research, Claudio Vita‐Finzi's monograph, The Mediterranean Valleys, introduced a very dif- ferent story (Vita‐Finzi 1969). Widespread landscape transfor- mation resulting in major alluvial infills of Mediterranean valley systems was far from being continuous; rather, he iden- tified just two major episodes of significant alluviation. One was the consequence of very different climatic conditions to the present during the last Ice Age, the Older Fill, and the other, dating from Late Antiquity, the Younger Fill, he believed was likewise climatically induced, the effect of an unusual climate during Late Roman times. In this volume and other publica- tions (e.g., Vita‐Finzi 1978, 2010), he has subsequently allowed that locally, there have occurred additional alluvial aggradation phases due to tectonics, human disturbance and other factors, but on a wider scale, only these two major episodes were identified in his original monograph as Mediterranean‐wide. In 1970, as an undergraduate, Eric Higgs invited me to partic- ipate in a Cambridge University archaeological expedition to Israel. In the framework of his innovative Palaeoeconomy movement, this project was focussed on collecting seed and bone remains from current excavations and carrying out the newly created landscape archaeology evaluation approach that Higgs had invented with Claudio, Site Catchment Analysis (Vita‐Finzi et al. 1970). One of my student tasks, and easily the most exciting, was to accompany Claudio in creating catchment studies of several prehistoric sites. This involved walking out from the site and mapping land use potential up to an hour or two on foot, the aim being to suggest which local factors led the site to be occupied and what resources could be extracted within its immediately accessible territory (Figure 1). Claudio was bronzed, athletic and extremely charismatic (Figure 2). At one point, he abruptly stopped the jeep that he © 2024 Wiley Periodicals LLC. 1 of 8 Geoarchaeology, 2024; 40:e22029 https://doi.org/10.1002/gea.22029