Multisecular Landscape Dynamics of a Medieval Islamic Royal Estate: Land-Use Change in Monteagudo-Cabezo de Torres (Murcia, Spain)

Understanding long-term land-use change is essential for interpreting Mediterranean cultural landscapes. This study reconstructs the landscape and agroecosystem dynamics of the former royal estate of Monteagudo-Cabezo de Torres (Murcia, SE Spain) from the 12th century to the present. We integrated archaeobotanical remains, historical documentation, radiocarbon dating and floristic inventories (19th century-2026), explicitly accounting for sampling biases in historical surveys. The results reveal a multi-layered landscape. Irrigated gardens and orchards coexisted with assisted dry farming on the upper slopes, which left a geomorphological legacy of terraces and runoff management. Rice was grown above the Almarjal between the 13th and 16th centuries, and ornamental species appear from the 13th to the 21st century. From the 19th century, dry-farming areas shifted to Opuntia ficus-indica and then to citrus, a transition that accelerated after the Tajo–Segura water transfer (post-1979), the most rapid landscape transformation in the area’s history. The flora shows substantial turnover, including at least 11 high-confidence local extirpations, eight of them dating from the medieval period, and a sharp recent increase in naturalized exotic species (48 in 2026). Integrating multiple lines of evidence resolves apparent contradictions among datasets and offers a robust, temporally deep framework to inform heritage conservation and sustainable land management in Mediterranean landscapes.