Occupying a pivotal location on the western coast of Turkey, the Madra
River Delta has always been a meeting place for the cultures of Anatolia
and the Aegean, but active geomorphological processes in the area have
hampered fieldwork, making it a significant challenge to reconstruct the
history of the landscape and its exploitation by humans. Modern
political geography has been another obstacle, encouraging the study of
the area in isolation from the neighbouring islands of the northeastern
Aegean, although from prehistory until the twentieth century they all
belonged to one cultural area. The Madra River Delta Project called on
distinguished international teams using innovative interdisciplinary
approaches to meet these challenges, and the results presented here shed
important new light on environmental changes in this part of the
Anatolian coastal region, on their long-term impact on the inhabitants
of the Delta, and on the cultural ties between the Delta and the island
of Lesbos from the prehistoric to the Roman period. Two closing chapters
focus on the area's medieval ceramics and its history in later Ottoman
times. This volume places the story of the communities of this important
coastal region in their environmental and cultural context.