Landscapes in the Mediterranean have undergone many significant changes in the last
centuries. ‘Traditional’ Mediterranean agricultural landscapes with features such as dry
stonewalls and terraces are connected with the agricultural roots of most modern Mediterranean
societies. Today, these characteristics are in decline when they are not destroyed,
due to the changes in the land use management systems of the last 150 years, caused by
developments in production and social structure. In this paper, the dynamics of the changes
are examined on a specific Greek island. Lesvos, which has an economic and landscape
history typical of many Mediterranean cases. Their economic development based on
agriculture and food processing created a landscape with terraces and stonewalls, which
is nowadays considered ‘traditional’. After some major political, economic and technological
developments had reduced the competitiveness of Lesvos’s economy, population
declined and landscape characteristics were degraded. The examination of these changes
with a descriptive model of landscape transformation offers some insight in the dynamics of
landscapes and their characteristics in the Mediterranean today for present and future
developments.