To get a sense of the relationship between karst geology and Greek settlement, we will look at examples from the Greek mainland, the islands of the Aegean, and Sicily. There is no attempt here to be comprehensive, as the necessary field work has not been done to make that possible, but rather these examples are selected to suggest the way that karst water potential played an important role in site selection and development. The major examples selected are Athens and Corinth for mainland Greece, Rhodes for the Aegean Islands, Assos and Priene for Ionia, and Syracuse and Akragas for Sicily. Other places will be cited briefly if the details from those sites are particularly illuminating. Karst phenomena, as we have seen, are found throughout the Greek world. Since Athens is perhaps the best documented Greek city, and has in addition a phenomenal karst system as its monumental focus, it receives here a section of its own, Chapter 18, The Well-Watered Acropolis. In Chapter 11, Planning Water Management, we discuss Corinth’s water system in comparison with that of her daughter city Syracuse. Here, however, we will consider the aspects of water at Corinth that derive from the karst geology of the area. This city is an excellent example of the adaptation of urban requirements to karst terrane, the siting of an ancient Greek city to take advantage of this natural resource. Ancient Corinth was built on gradually sloping terraces below the isolated protuberance of Acrocorinth, which acts as a reservoir, with the flow of waters through it resulting in springs (Fig. 8.1). That karst waters are to be found in perched nappes even at high altitudes accounts for the spring of Upper Peirene not far below the summit of Acrocorinth, as well as the two fountains half-way down the road from its citadel, and the fountain called Hadji Mustapha, at the immediate foot of the citadel (as reported by the late seventeenth century traveler, E. Celebi, cited in Mackay, 1967, 193–95.) The aquifers also supply the aqueduct (probably ancient) from Penteskouphia southwest of Acrocorinth.
Impact of Coal Mining on Karst Water System in North China
