The Holocene fluvial history of the Tremithos river (south central Cyprus) and its linkage to archaeological records Matthieu Ghilardi 1 , Stéphane Cordier 2 , Jean-Michel Carozza 3 , David Psomiadis 1 , Jean Guilaine 4 , Zomenia Zomeni 5 , François Demory 1 , Doriane Delanghe-Sabatier 1 , Marc-Antoine Vella 1 , Guenaëlle Bony 1 , Christophe Morhange 1,6 1 CNRS UMR 7330 CEREGE, Aix-en-Provence CEDEX, France, 2 Département de Géographie et UMR 8591 CNRS, Université Paris 1-Université Paris Est Créteil, Créteil Cedex, France, 3 Département de Géographie, 3 Rue de l’Argonne, 67000 Strasbourg, France, 4 Collège de France, Paris, France, 5 Cyprus Geological Survey, Nicosia, Cyprus, 6 Aix-Marseille Université, Institut Universitaire de France, France This study aims to reconstruct the Holocene fluvial history of the Tremithos river, south central Cyprus and examine linkages to regional and local archaeological records. Three stratigraphic profiles (Sp1, Sp2 and Sp3) located in the lower valley have been investigated using sedimentology and magnetic parameters. The 14 C dating of 10 samples reveals mid-Holocene ages for Sp1 and Sp2, while the upper most part of Sp3 can be attributed to the early to mid-Holocene. Two main phases of vertical accretion have been recognised: the first, recorded in the lower most part of Sp3, could not be dated but might relate to the late Glacial period. It is not associated with any archaeological artefacts. The second, recorded in all profiles, dating from ca. 5000 to ca. cal 2800 BC, spans the Late Neolithic Sotira (cal 4800/4000 BC) and Late Chalcolithic (cal 2900–2500 BC) cultures. The sediments of Sp1 and Sp2 are up to 8–10 m thick and mainly composed of fine material. However, an intercalated phase of coarse sediment has been identified at the beginning of the third millennium BC, indicating a sudden change in river dynamics, potentially associated with the 5.2 ka rapid climate change regional event. Typical mid-Chalcolithic (ca. cal 3300–3050 BC) ceramics found in a palaeosol in Sp2 indicate for the first time human occupation of the Tremithos river terraces. Two other palaeosols have also been recognised in Sp3 and radiocarbon dated to ca. cal 5600–4100 BC and ca. cal 2900–2600 BC, respectively. These results make it possible to propose a palaeogeographic reconstruction of the Holocene evolution in the Tremithos valley and to make a preliminary assessment of the relative roles of tectonics, climate and anthropogenic forcing. Keywords: Cyprus, Holocene, Chalcolithic, Fluvial terraces, sedimentology, Tremithos river Introduction The factors responsible for alluvial landscape evol- ution in the eastern Mediterranean valleys since the Last Glacial maximum, in particular disentangling natural and anthropogenic factors, have been a matter of debate since the late 1960s (Vita-Finzi 1969; Bintliff 2002; Butzer 2005; Fuchs 2007; Devillers 2008). Many authors have suggested that alluvial terraces represent reliable archives for asses- sing the respective roles of tectonic, climatic and anthropogenic controls on landscape evolution (e.g. Brown 1985; Bridgland and Westaway 2008; De Moor et al. 2008; Notebaert and Verstraeten 2010; Dusar et al. 2011; Wolf et al. 2014). Recently, geoarch- aeological approaches, combining several proxies, have highlighted the consequences of human activity on Holocene fluvial landscapes in the eastern Mediterranean (Dusar et al. 2011), and in particular in the Aegean area (Lespez 2003; Unkel et al. 2014). On the island of Cyprus, despite the presence of numerous incised valleys, which formed during Late Cenozoic and Quaternary as a response to tectonic uplift (Dalongeville et al. 2000; Kinnaird et al. 2011), permanent streams are lacking because of the semi-arid (Mediterranean) to arid climate (Grove 1977; Devillers 2005). Vertically accreted alluvial deposits are therefore rare (Butzer and Harris 2007), making the reconstruction of Holocene palaeo- environments challenging. Few places (mainly in the Correspondence to: Matthieu Ghilardi, CNRS UMR 7330 CEREGE, Europôle de l’Arbois, BP 80 13545, Aix-en-Provence CEDEX 04, France. Email: ghilardi@cerege.fr © Association for Environmental Archaeology 2015 DOI 10.1179/1749631414Y.0000000057 Environmental Archaeology 2015 VOL. 20 NO. 2 184