Abstract
Climate changes and human activities have influenced the evolution of valley slopes during the late Holocene. The study of 15th and 16th century tax documents from Santo Pietro’s Piève provides information on both the position of medieval sites and population dynamics. Ancient (1776-1850) and recent maps (2010) allow the territorial geography to be reconstructed and to characterize the geomorphology at the micro-regional scale. Survey work, chronostratigraphy and palynological studies of the Spizicciu valley allow us to probe landscape changes during the Medieval Climate Anomaly (~750-1000 AD) and the Little Ice Age (~1450-1850 AD ). We observe an increase in erosion / sedimentation rates in Corsican valleys from ~ 1150 cal. AD related to vegetation changes. The history of human occupation of the island, in addition to the farming techniques implemented at this time, can be related to significant changes in the landscape.