Boundaries of agrarian production in the Bergisches Land in 1715 AD [CAA 2016] (original) (raw)

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.