Preprint : Scales of transformations -Modelling settlement and land-use dynamics in Late Antique and Early Medieval Basel, Switzerland (original) (raw)
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PLoS ONE, 2023
Multicomponent environmental models have increasingly found their way into archaeological research. Mostly, these models aim to understand human patterns as a result of past climatic and environmental conditions over long-term periods. However, major limitations are the low spatial and temporal resolution of the environmental data, and hence the rather static model output. Particular challenges are thus the number of chosen variables, the comprehensiveness of the explanatory parameters, and the integration of socio-cultural decision-making into the model. Here, we present a novel approach to generate annually resolved landcover variability using a broad variety of climatic, geological, hydrological, topographical, and dendrochronological data composites (Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI)). We analyze land-use and settlement capacity and vulnerability to estimate the socio-cultural transformation processes at Basel (Switzerland) during the Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Our results highlight the potential of the PDSI to predict local river runoff behavior from catchment analyses. The model enables to trace landcover as well as socio-cultural response to climatic variability and subsequent adaptation to trends in environmental vulnerability. This approach further helps to understand population dynamics in the periphery of the Roman administrative boundaries and to revise traditional archaeological narratives of large-scale population replacements during the so-called Migration Period.
Modelling Neolithic Western Switzerland: Demography and Land Use (2018)
The interdisciplinary trinational project “Beyond lake villages: Studying Neolithic environmental changes and human impact at small lakes in Switzerland, Germany and Austria” combines research agendas on micro, meso- and macro-regional scales for a better understanding of human-environment relationships over time in the Northern Alpine Foreland. Next to archaeological and palynological investigations an emphasis is set on computer-based modelling studies. In this framework different kinds of approaches are chosen to investigate the reciprocity in human-environment systems especially concerned with past human spatial behaviour and land use (LU). Our subproject focuses on the Three-Lakes-Region in Western Switzerland, which was densely settled during the Neolithic (~4300- 2200 cal. BC). The richness of (bio-)archaeological data from the lake shore villages provides us with reliable information about prehistoric subsistence economy, social organization and, in many cases, with high resolution dendrochronological dating. In order to tackle the question of past LU patterns we employ an approach that enables us to test and explore hypotheses about the settlement dynamics, subsistence models and strategies to cope with a changing environment. We use a regional scaled down version of the “Global Land Use and technological Evolution Simulator” (GLUES) to simulate population growth/decline and combine it with the agent-based “Wetland Settlement Simulator” (WELASSIMO) to simulate the LU. We are currently working on a simulation model that is capable to estimate human impact on their environment and gain insights into Neolithic communities’ resilience against changes in the natural system, triggered by external forces or the legacy of former LU activities.
Land use dynamics in Neolithic Western Switzerland (2019)
Neolithic communities of the Northern Alpine Foreland show a distinct settlement behavior which prefers locations at the shores of water bodies and short-lived phases of occupation, implicating a high residential mobility. The reciprocal social and environmental conditions and choices to create and maintain such a settlement system are highly debated and belong to the sphere of the investigation of socioecological systems. The interdisciplinary tri-national research project “Beyond lake villages: Studying Neolithic environmental changes and human impact at small lakes in Switzerland, Germany and Austria” explores old and new archaeological as well as paleoecological data to widen the view on the phenomena of the Neolithic wetland sites at different spatial scales. For Western Switzerland a computer-based simulation model on the meso regional scale is built to simulate land use (LU), anthropogenic land cover change (ALCC) and the demographic and socio-technological development of Neolithic communities. Based on the gradient adaptive dynamics between population density and sociocultural traits under environmental constrains a regional scaled down version of he “Global Land Use and technological Evolution Simulator” (GLUES) simulates growth and decline of prehistoric communities. The LU module of our simulation model, based on the agent-based Wetland Settlement Simulator” (WELASSIMO), translates the population size and assumptions about the subsistence economy into spatially explicit LU. During the simulation the alteration of important resources affected by the communities’ induced LU is tracked. Legacy effects from former inhabitation of a landscape have influence on the attractiveness of specific places that can be chosen as settlement location. Under different scenarios concerning communities’ resilience, economic choices and environmental changes we investigate probable reasons and mechanism of LU dynamics and its influence Neolithic settlement behaviour at a long-term scale.
Netherlands Journal of Geosciences, 2018
In this study we apply an evidence-based approach to model population-size fluctuations and their corresponding impact on land use during the Roman and early-medieval periods in the Rhine–Meuse delta in the present-day Netherlands. Past-population numbers are reconstructed based on Roman and early-medieval settlement patterns. Corresponding impacts of these demographic fluctuations on potential land use are calculated by integrating the newly developed demographic overviews with archaeological and geoscientific data using a new land-use model termed ‘Past Land-Use Scanner’ (PLUS). The primary aims are to reconstruct first-millennium palaeodemographics and to explore the potential of simulation modelling for testing the feasibility of archaeological hypotheses regarding past land use. Results show that in the study area the first millennium AD was characterised by two periods during which major population growth occurred: the middle-Roman period (AD 70–270) and early-medieval period ...
Quaternary international, 2017
Settlement locations in delta landscapes change through time because of cultural and natural dynamics. We assessed the impact of natural-landscape dynamics on settlement-location shifts for the Rhine-Meuse delta in the Netherlands during the Roman and early-medieval periods (12 BCE-450 CE and 450-1050 CE respectively). During this time interval major landscape and cultural changes occurred in this area, with river avulsions and changes in flooding frequency coinciding with changing settlement patterns. In the delta plain, the relatively high and dry alluvial ridges of abandoned or active rivers were most favourable for habitation. Settlement location and elevation patterns were reconstructed in these landscape units using a high-resolution elevation map of the alluvial ridges. By integrating high-resolution palaeo-environmental and archaeological datasets for this period, we were able to spatially analyse the trends and to assess the effect of environmental changes on habitation. Results show that settlements progressively shifted towards higher areas between 250 and 750 CE, on average by 20 cm over this period deltawide, which was coeval with an increased frequency of severe Rhine floods. The observed spatial differences demonstrate that this trend is most notable in the least-elevated segments of the study area. In areas where new large river branches developed, settlements show a strong shift towards higher-elevated parts of the landscape or even became completely abandoned. The river probably caused floods to be more frequent and more severe in these areas. Despite the clear link between changing settlement positions and floods during the studied time interval, floods do not seem to have caused long-term abandonment of major parts of the study area.
2019
Baum 2014 Tilman Georg Baum, Models of wetland settlement and associated land use in South-West Germany during the fourth millennium B.C. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 23 (2014), Supplement, S67– S80. A GIS-based modelling approach is presented that interprets existing data on subsistence strategies of pile-dwelling people of the Lake Constance area in SouthWestern Germany and North-Eastern Switzerland. This is conducted using the examples of the settlement sites at Hornstaad-Ho¿rnle 1, Sipplingen-Osthafen and Degersee. Soil distribution and the geomorphologic features of a landscape are used as the basis for illustrating various scenarios of land use depicting hypotheses of economic strategies and aspects of the human-environment-system. In particular the implications of the crop system and the discussion about Shifting Cultivation or Intensive Garden Cultivation are used as different modelling inputs, alongside the spatial demand for cattle herding and for the extraction of...