scholarly journals Colluvial sediments originating from past land-use activities in the Erzgebirge Mountains, Central Europe: occurrence, properties, and historic environmental implications

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
Author(s):  
Knut Kaiser ◽  
Johann Friedrich Tolksdorf ◽  
Anna Maartje de Boer ◽  
Christoph Herbig ◽  
Falk Hieke ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Soil Erosion ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Environmental Implications ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
Mountain Landscapes ◽  
Past Land Use

AbstractColluvial sediments originating from soil erosion on slopes have proven to constitute significant evidence for tracing past human impact on mountain landscapes. In the Central European Erzgebirge (Ore) Mountains, colluvial sediments are associated with specific landforms (footslopes, slope flattenings, dells) and cover a share of 11% (11,905 ha) of the regional soil landscape. Thirteen pedosedimentary sections with colluvial layers were investigated at five forested sites (520–730 m a.s.l.) within a context of mining archaeology, integrating data from pedology, archaeology, palaeobotany, and geochronology. The thickness of the gravel-bearing loamy, silty, and sandy colluvial layers is up to 70 cm, which are mostly located on top of the sections. The geochronological ages and archaeological data reveal a high to late medieval to post-medieval age of the colluvial sediments. Pollen data show a drastic decline of the mountain forests in the late twelfth to fifteenth centuries AD accompanied by an increase of pioneer trees and spruce at the expense of fir and beech. The primary cause of soil erosion and subsequent colluvial deposition at the sites investigated is medieval to post-medieval mining and other early industrial activities. A compilation of 395 radiocarbon and OSL ages, obtained from colluvial sediments at 197 upland sites in Central Europe, shows that anthropogenically initiated colluvial dynamics go as far back as the late Bronze Age to the early Iron Age. Most ages derive from the medieval to post-medieval period, corresponding to the general intensification of settlement and land-use activities including deforestation and widespread ore mining.

Holocene evolution of closed depressions and its relation to landscape dynamics in the loess areas of Poland

The Holocene ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 543-564 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renata Kołodyńska-Gawrysiak
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Soil Erosion ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Landscape Dynamics ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Atlantic Period

Past Pleistocene topography of the loess uplands is rich in local sinks (closed depressions (CDs)) influencing sediment fluxes. Soil-sediment sequences from CDs constituting geoarchives where landscape changes under natural and anthropogenic conditions have been recorded. Pedo-sedimentary archives from 10 CDs in the Polish loess belt and human settlements were analysed. Phases of the Holocene evolution of the CDs were correlated with landscape dynamics in loess areas in Poland and Central Europe. Phases of infilling of CDs occurring (2) from the late Boreal/early Atlantic Period until the (middle) late Bronze Age/early Iron Age and (4) since the early Middle Ages until today were documented. These were phases of long-term soil erosion and colluviation corresponding to the increasing agricultural land use of Polish loess uplands. Phases of soil formation related to geomorphic stabilization of CDs occurred (1) from the late Vistulian until the late Boreal/early Atlantic Period and (3) from the late Bronze Age/early Iron Age until the early/high Middle Ages. These were phases of decreased soil erosion and landform conservation in a considerable part of Poland’s loess areas. Pedo-sedimentary archives from the CDs have recorded soil erosion strongly related with human-induced land-use changes. The mean soil erosion rate in the catchment of CDs was 0.33 t·ha−1·yr−1 during prehistory and 4.0 t·ha−1·yr−1 during the last approximately 1000 years. Phases of CD evolution are representative for the main phases of sediment and landscape dynamics in Poland’s loess areas recorded in various archives, and are not synchronous with some of these phases in Central Europe.

scholarly journals Past land use and soil erosion processes in central Europe

PAGES news ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 49-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Dotterweich ◽  
Stefan Dreibrodt
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Soil Erosion ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Erosion Processes ◽  
Past Land Use

scholarly journals THE BEGINNING OF THE IRON AGE AT ARSLANTEPE: A 14C PERSPECTIVE

Radiocarbon ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Federico Manuelli ◽  
Cristiano Vignola ◽  
Fabio Marzaioli ◽  
Isabella Passariello ◽  
Filippo Terrasi
Keyword(s):  
Mass Spectrometry ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
High Precision ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Accelerator Mass Spectrometry ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Preliminary Results ◽  
Archaeological Data

ABSTRACT The Iron Age chronology at Arslantepe is the result of the interpretation of Luwian hieroglyphic inscriptions and archaeological data coming from the site and its surrounding region. A new round of investigations of the Iron Age levels has been conducted at the site over the last 10 years. Preliminary results allowed the combination of the archaeological sequence with the historical events that extended from the collapse of the Late Bronze Age empires to the formation and development of the new Iron Age kingdoms. The integration into this picture of a new set of radiocarbon (14C) dates is aimed at establishing a more solid local chronology. High precision 14C dating by accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) and its correlation with archaeobotanical analysis and stratigraphic data are presented here with the purpose of improving our knowledge of the site’s history and to build a reliable absolute chronology of the Iron Age. The results show that the earliest level of the sequence dates to ca. the mid-13th century BC, implying that the site started developing a new set of relationships with the Levant already before the breakdown of the Hittite empire, entailing important historical implications for the Syro-Anatolian region at the end of the 2nd millennium BC.

Journal of Greek Archaeology Volume 6: Editorial

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. v-v
Author(s):  
John Bintliff
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Regional Economics ◽  
Greek Archaeology ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Landscape Survey ◽  
Rich Data

Our latest volume maintains our goal to cover the broad chronological spread of Greek Archaeology, ranging from a new review of the Mesolithic occupation at Theopetra, one of the most important hunter-gatherer sites in Greece, to a detailed analysis of how the distribution of Middle Byzantine churches in the Peloponnese enlightens us into the evolution of human settlement and land use. Prehistory is richly represented in further articles, as we learn about Middle Bronze Age society on Lefkas, the dispute over exotic primates portrayed on the frescoes of Santorini, a new Minoan-style peak sanctuary on Naxos, and Post-Palatial settlement structure on Crete. Bridging prehistory to historical times, a detailed study rethinks the burial and settlement evidence for Early Iron Age Athens, then entering the Archaic period, an original article links textual analysis and material culture to investigate dedicatory behaviour in Ionian sanctuaries. As a special treat, that doyen of Greek plastic arts Andrew Stewart, asks us to look again at the evidence for the birth of the Classical Style in Greek sculpture. Greek theatres in Sicily are next contextualised into contemporary politics, while the sacred Classical landscape of the island of Salamis is explored with innovative GIS-techniques. For the seven-hundred years or so of Roman rule we are given an indepth presentation of regional economics from Central Greece, and a thorough review of harbours and maritime navigation for Late Roman Crete. Finally we must mention a methodological article, deploying the rich data from the Nemea landscape survey, to tackle issues of changing land use and the sometimes controversial topic of ancient manuring.

Defining Issues

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis Harding
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Subjective Assessment ◽  
Single Family ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Structural Morphology ◽  
Social Unit ◽  
River Bends

‘Hillfort’ is a term of convenience. It is widely recognized that the monuments in question are not restricted topographically to hills, and that their role may not have been primarily, and certainly not exclusively, for military defence. Nor are they restricted chronologically to the Iron Age, though during that period they are particularly prominent. The term came into general currency following the publication in 1931 of Christopher Hawkes’ paper, simply entitled ‘Hillforts’, in Antiquity, which also established their predominantly Iron Age date in Britain. Prior to that, Christison (1898) in Scotland had discussed ‘fortifications’, and Hadrian Allcroft (1908) for England had classified ‘earthwork’, both extending their studies into the Medieval period. But ‘hillfort’ for all its limitations has remained in general usage in Britain. Chronologically, this study is concerned with the ‘long Iron Age’; that is, including the post-Roman Iron Age in northern Britain especially, and with later Bronze Age antecedents. Geographically it is concerned with regional groups throughout Britain, but with further reference to Ireland, and in the wider context of relevant sites and developments in continental Europe. The key element of the sites under consideration is enclosure, physically or conceptually demarcating an area to which access is restricted or controlled. This may be achieved by rampart and ditch, stockade or fence, or by the incorporation of topographical and natural features such as cliff-edge or marsh. The scale of enclosing works may range from a relatively modest barrier to massive earthworks that reshape the landscape, and in structural morphology, from single palisade or bank to multiple lines, variously disposed. Topographically they may be located around hilltop contours, on cliffedge, ridge, or promontory, on spurs or hill slopes, in wetlands or spanning river bends, or across variable terrain. In area enclosed they may range from well under a hectare to 20 ha and more, with the territorial or terrain oppida of the late pre-Roman Iron Age attaining 300 ha or more. From size alone, therefore, we may infer a great diversity in the practical, social, and symbolic purposes that they may have served. At the smaller end of the scale, the distinction between hillforts and other enclosed settlements is sometimes a matter of subjective assessment, but otherwise their size and scale suggests that they were community sites, serving a social unit larger than a single family or household.

A Life Less Ordinary: the Ritualization of the Domestic Sphere in Later Prehistoric Europe

2003 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Bradley
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
The Other ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Social Archaeology ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
Domestic Life ◽  
Contemporary Archaeology ◽  
The Past

This article, which is based on the fourteenth McDonald Lecture, considers two tensions in contemporary archaeology. One is between interpretations of specific structures, monuments and deposits as the result of either ‘ritual’ or ‘practical’ activities in the past, and the other is between an archaeology that focuses on subsistence and adaptation and one that emphasizes cognition, meaning, and agency. It suggests that these tensions arise from an inadequate conception of ritual itself. Drawing on recent studies of ritualization, it suggests that it might be more helpful to consider how aspects of domestic life took on special qualities in later prehistoric Europe. The discussion is based mainly on Neolithic enclosures and other monuments, Bronze Age and Iron Age settlement sites and the Viereckschanzen of central Europe. It may have implications for field archaeology as well as social archaeology, and also for those who study the formation of the archaeological record.

Social Change and Land Use in Prehistoric Dalmatia

1993 ◽  
Vol 59 ◽  
pp. 61-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Chapman ◽  
Robert Shiel
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Explanatory Models ◽  
Similar Data ◽  
Private Land ◽  
Study Region ◽  
Cyclic Variations ◽  
Communal Land Ownership

The Neothermal Dalmatia Project is an Anglo-Yugoslav collaborative project whose aims are to define and explain changes in physical environment, settlement pattern and social structure in north Dalmatia over the last 12 millennia. The Project's fieldwork included archaeological field survey, analytical survey, trial excavation of Neolithic, Copper Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman sites, soil and land use mapping, ethnographic survey of modern villages and hamlets and palaeoenvironmental reconstructions (pollen, sediments, sea-level change, etc.). Within the long-term constraints of a limestone-dominated study region, the short-term events and medium-term agrarian and demographic cycles of the Dalmatian social groups have been studied in an inter-disciplinary manner. In this article, an attempt is made to examine the environmental and archaeological data within the frameworks of four explanatory models: the Land Use Capability (LUC) Model, the Cyclic Intensification–Deintensification (CID) Model, the Communal Ownership of Property (COP) Model and the Arenas of Social Power (ASP) Model. In the LUC model, reconstructions of past land use capabilities are used to derive postdictions of the most likely settlement patterns for successive periods (Neolithic–Roman); a high degree of postdictive success is met. In the CID model, Bintliff's model of cyclic variations in agricultural intensification and private land-holding is refined and tested against survey and excavation data. In the COP model, Fleming's model of communal land ownership is tested against similar data, with contrasting results. Finally, the ASP model is used to explain the expanded range of arenas of social power which develops from a place-based worldview in the early farming period. The conjoint use of these four explanatory models, which operate at different scales of duration, provides a broader basis for understanding changes in the prehistory of north Dalmatia in the Neothermal period than had previously been constructed.

scholarly journals Bronze Age “pristinity”, Iron Age anthropization and Medieval intensification of human impact around Lake Montcortès (southern-central Pyrenees): a possible mid-elevation pattern and its significance for the definition of the Anthropocene

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentí Rull ◽  
Teresa Vegas-Vilarrúbia ◽  
Juan Pablo Corella ◽  
Blas Valero-Garcé
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Human Impact ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Human Pressure ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Early Medieval Period ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Central Pyrenees

Abstract The varved sediments of Lake Montcortès (central Pyrenees) have provided a continuous and well-dated high-resolution record of the last ca. 3000 years. Previous chronological and sedimentological studies of this record have furnished detailed paleoenvironmental reconstructions. However, palynological studies are only available for the last millennium, and the vegetation and the landscape around the lake had already been transformed by humans by this time. Therefore, the primeval vegetation of Montcortès and the history of its anthropogenic transformations remains unknown. This paper presents a palynological analysis of the interval between the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1100 BCE) and the Early Medieval period (820 CE), aimed at recording the preanthropic conditions, the anthropization onset and the further landscape transformations. During the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1100 BCE to 770 BCE), the vegetation did not show any evidence of human impact. The decisive anthropogenic transformation of the Montcortès catchment vegetation and landscape started at the beginning of the Iron Age (770 BCE) and continued during Roman and Medieval times in the form of recurrent burning, grazing, cultivation, silviculture, hemp retting and other human activities. Some intervals of lower human pressure were recorded, but the original vegetation never returned. The anthropization that took place during the Iron Age did not cause relevant changes in the sediment yield to the lake, but a significant limnological shift occurred, as manifested in the initiation of varve formation, a process that has been continuous until today. Climatic shifts seem to have played a secondary role in influencing catchment vegetation and landscape changes from the Iron Age onwards. These results contrast with previous inferences of low anthropogenic impact until the Medieval Period, at a regional level (central Pyrenees). The intensification of human pressure in Early Medieval times (580 CE onwards) has also been observed in Lake Montcortès, but the overall anthropization of its watershed had already commenced a couple of millennia before, at the beginning of the Iron Age. It could be interesting to verify whether the same pattern – i.e., Late Bronze “pristinity”, Iron Age anthropization and Early Medieval intensification of human pressure – may be a recurrent pattern for mid-elevation Pyrenean landscapes below the tree line. This pattern complicates the definition of the “Anthropocene”, as it adds a new dimension, i.e., elevational diachronism, to the anthropization of mountain ranges, in general.

scholarly journals Sten som betydelsebärare i den förhistoriska föreställningsvärlden

AmS-Varia ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 77-86
Author(s):  
Marianne Lönn
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Migration Period ◽  
Basic Change ◽  
Late Iron Age ◽  
Similar Appearance ◽  
The Bronze Age

This article discusses the meaning of stones and the practice of gathering stones, in graves, clearance cairns and stone-covered hillocks. The emphases are on stone-covered hillocks and their long-term usage (up to 1500 years), analyzed using the concept of longue durée. In this paper I propose that the stones in themselves have a cultic meaning as well as the actions, i.e. the remodeling of hillocks and the placing of clearance cairns among graves. In this, I see a connection between stone-covered hillocks, graves and clearance cairns. The underlying concept is a stable, but slowly changing, prehistoric religious tradition that lasted from the Bronze Age to the Migration Period and possibly also through the Late Iron Age. A basic change in this does not take place until the coming of Christianity in the Medieval Period. The reason that Medieval and later clearance cairns were placed together with graves is probably due to their similar appearance.

THE NATURE OF THE HALLSTATTIAN CULTURAL CHANGE IN NORTHERN CENTRAL EUROPE IN LIGHT OF RADIOCARBON DATING OF THE LATE BRONZE AGE STRONGHOLD AT ŁUBOWICE NEAR RACIBÓRZ (SOUTHWEST POLAND)

Radiocarbon ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Jan Chochorowski ◽  
Marek Krąpiec
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Timber Structures ◽  
Social Functions ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
Sw Poland ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Bronze Age

ABSTRACT At the close of the Bronze Age, a tendency developed in Central Europe towards the concentration of settlement and fortification of sites which served special economic and social functions. One of the largest centers of this kind in the northern part of Central Europe is the Łubowice stronghold (SW Poland). Archaeological excavations allowed the stratigraphy of the fortification remnants to be comprehensively investigated. In their final stage, these fortifications comprised of a monumental earthen rampart with timber structures, which were later destroyed in a violent fire. Originally, the destruction of the Łubowice stronghold was linked with the raids by nomadic Scythians and dated to the first half of the 6th century BC. However, radiocarbon analyses of charcoal from the burned rampart relics have shown that the destruction of the fortifications took place in the 9th century BC. The new dating of the moment when the Łubowice fortifications was burned down, i.e. “shortly after 845–802 cal BC” places this event within historical processes which reshaped the cultural picture in much of Central Europe at the dawn of the Iron Age. The spreading of a new, Hallstatt cultural model was associated with deep changes in social structures.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document