Correction to: Intensification of agriculture in southwestern Germany between the Bronze Age and Medieval period, based on archaeobotanical data from Baden-Württemberg (original) (raw)
Related papers
A system of farming with an alternation of land use between being cultivated or left fallow as grassland (Feldgraswirtschaft) developed in southwestern Germany since the Bronze Age. It involved fallow periods, where the arable land is left without crops in order to let it recover its fertility for several years while becoming grassland. This led to regeneration of the topsoil humus, which could later be mobilized by cultivation. With later farming systems, the supply of nutrients needed for crops could also be provided by manuring, which allowed shorter fallow periods but required the production of manure. Such cultivation systems with short or even without fallow phases and with intensive manuring are known from the medieval period as one, two or three field systems of agriculture and their development was an important step towards the intensification of farming. The current study considers on-site plant macrofossil data from archaeological sites as well as the off-site pollen data from cores in Baden-Württemberg in order to recognize the main changes towards agricultural intensification through time from the Bronze Age up to medieval times. The various landscape types included in the study area also reveal their different agricultural histories of intensification. In lowlands with good soils, the intensification can be recognized earlier and more strongly than in uplands or other marginal areas. The main shift towards intensification took place in the Roman period, which is also confirmed by written sources of the time that mention manuring as well as a kind of two field system and alternation between grassland and arable land.
The material presented here was prepared by a group of scientists during the last three decennia in the Laboratory of Archaeobotany in Hemmenhofen. It consists of several high-resoluted pollen profiles from lake sediments in the regions of western Lake Constance, Upper Swabia, and the Northern Black Forest, and of botanical off-site data of several sites in Southwest Germany. The pollen profiles show big differences in the intensity of land use during the Bronze Age between the regions as well as between profiles that were even rather closely situated to each other. In all profiles, clear indications of deforestation and the presence of pastures and arable land are visible. Inside the forest, a shift from Fagus and Abies to more useful trees, such as Quercus, can be observed. In agriculture, the Neolithic set of crops was enlarged by Triticum spelta, and later by Panicum miliaceum and Setaria italica, while Triticum dicoccon and monococcum simultaneously lost their importance. Pulses were rather frequent. Arable weeds, typical for winter crops even on poor (acidic as well as basic) soils, appear and help us to understand Bronze Age agriculture, which was rather similar to the Iron Age and Medieval land use systems based on arable fields, extensive ard cultivation, forest pasture, and fertilizing with pulses and perhaps already animal dung. Economic and ecological crises as a consequence of over-exploitation during the mba and towards the end of the lba are associated with decreases of land use in several regions.
Botanical on-site and off-site data relating to Late Neolithic and Bronze Age settlement phases in south-western Germany are compared with a view to reconstructing economic and environmental change. The large differences between the Neolithic and Bronze Age as regards forest composition, crops and crop weeds, and charcoal input are explained in terms of different types of agronomic systems and hence cultural landscape. In the Late Neolithic, shifting cultivation, involving slash and burn, was practised with the result that the landscape was largely dominated by tall shrubs. In the Bronze Age there were more or less permanent arable fields with only short fallow phases. The agronomic system and the resuiting cultural landscape was already similar to that of the medieval period and, especially, early medieval time.
This study uses two novel archaeobotanical techniques – crop carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis and functional weed ecology – to determine directly how the intensity of agricultural practice changed from the Neolithic to the Early Iron Age in southwest Germany, with the emergence of fortified hilltop settlements (Fürstensitze or chiefly seats) regarded as the first urban centres in central Europe. The crop isotope and functional weed ecological evidence suggest that surplus cereal production in the Early Iron Age was achieved through sustained use of manure combined with expansion in arable cultivation, both developments that are connected with more widespread use of animal traction. The increased scale of cultivation is broadly apparent across rural as well as fortified hilltop centres in the Early Iron Age, and considerable variability in manuring intensity is consistent with agricultural decision-making at a local level rather than centralised control. Additionally, the more intensive manuring of hulled six-row barley, used in beer production, demonstrates that the political importance of drinking and feasting in Early Iron Age society was reflected in crop husbandry practices. In terms of animal husbandry, faunal isotope data reveal a radical decrease in forest cover, potentially reflecting an expansion in the scale of herding accompanying that of arable cultivation. Site-specific patterning points to a range of herding strategies, from specialised herding of cattle at the Heuneburg to generalised patterns of livestock management at rural sites.
New approaches to prehistoric land-use reconstruction in south-western Germany
Vegetation History and Archaeobotany, 1996
Botanical on-site and off-site data relating to Late Neolithic and Bronze Age settlement phases in south-western Germany are compared with a view to reconstructing economic and environmental change. The large differences between the Neolithic and Bronze Age as regards forest composition, crops and crop weeds, and charcoal input are explained in terms of different types of agronomic systems and hence cultural landscape. In the Late Neolithic, shifting cultivation, involving slash and burn, was practised with the result that the landscape was largely dominated by tall shrubs. In the Bronze Age there were more or less permanent arable fields with only short fallow phases. The agronomic system and the resulting cultural landscape was already similar to that of the medieval period and, especially, early medieval time.
Geoarchaeology, 2023
We present results from a systematic interdisciplinary study on (pre-)historic rural settlement and landscape development in an upland region of northern Bavaria, Germany. The archaeological and geoarchaeological investigationssupported by radiocarbon dating, optically stimulated luminescence dating, and palaeoecological analysis-were performed to (i) identify so far unknown prehistoric rural settlement sites, (ii) determine site-specific soil erosion from colluvial deposits, and (iii) assess the composition of woodland from on-and offsite charcoal finds. The earliest indicators of human activities from the Younger Neolithic (late 5th to early 4th millennium B.C.E.) come from colluvial deposits. Our investigations, for the first time, show Middle to Late Bronze Age (ca. 1400-800 B.C.E.), permanent rural settlement in a German central upland region, with a peak in the Late Bronze Age. Due to the varying thicknesses of Bronze Age colluvial deposits, we assume land use practices to have triggered soil erosion. From the spectrum of wood species, Maloideae, ash, and birch are regarded as successional indicators after fire clearance in that period. Settlement continued until the 5th century B.C.E. After a hiatus of 500 years, it re-flourished in the Late Roman and Migration periods (mid-3rd-5th century C.E.
Praehistorische Zeitschrift, 2024
In northern Germany, crop diversity was much greater in the Late Bronze Age than in previous periods. To trace this development at a local scale, we conducted an archaeobotanical case study at the site of Dobbin 27, a rural settlement in north-eastern Germany dating to the Late Bronze Age. Charred seeds and fruits were recovered and the spatial distribution of these remains was analysed in order to understand the spatial organisation of plant-related activities at the site, principally plant processing. We discovered that the inhabitants processed cereals outside the house, in open areas of the settlement. Broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum) and barley (Hordeum vulgare) were the most common finds in the archaeobotanical samples; small proportions of pulses and wild fruits and nuts were also found. This shows that a wide range of plants was used by the prehistoric community at Dobbin 27. A regional comparison of the plant macro-remains record from Dobbin 27 with that from contemporary sites reveals both differences and similarities in crop choices and other aspects of the plant economy.
Boundaries of agrarian production in the Bergisches Land in 1715 AD [CAA 2016]
For part of Bergisches Land east of Cologne, Germany, the maps by Ploennies finished in 1715 AD and the accompanying text provide detailed data for testing approaches used in archaeology for determining the boundaries of agrarian production. The historical maps indicate the settlement sizes ranging from single farmsteads to towns with walls. In 1715 AD the towns were quite small and the economy in this rural area relied mostly on agriculture (oats and livestock). The boundaries of agrarian production can be estimated by applying methods for allocating farmland territories to the settlement locations. The methods discussed are site catchments, retrodictive modelling for neighbourhoods, Thiessen polygons and approaches based on the distances between neighbouring settlement locations. With the exception of retrodictive modelling for neighbourhoods, two variants of the approaches are applicable, either resting on straight-line or least-cost distances.
Vegetation History and Archaeobotany, 1998
The results of more than 100 archaeobotanical investigations from south-western Germany have been arranged into chronological groups and analyzed with a spreadsheet to obtain presence data and the numbers of taxa present in the various time periods. They show an increase in the number of plant taxa cultivated in gardens since the Roman period, a decrease in the crops that were the earliest to be cultivated, especially emmer, and an increase of spelt, rye and oats in the course of time. New crop weeds appear, including an increasing number of southern plants originating from open vegetation. This is more likely to be a result of the intensification of agriculture than from increased human mobility. The crop weeds, grouped together according to their requirements for soil nutrients, show increasing soil acidification through the course of time.