Landscape Transformed: Archaeological, Historical and Environmental Dating of the Early Modern Field System in Valštejn, Czech Republic

Abstract

The historical field system of Valštejn represents one of the most extensive historical landscape complexes in the Czech Republic. Archaeological excavation of a former agricultural terrace (now a meadow) revealed the elaborate construction of a wall and stone foundation under the former arable field. This construction probably served for drainage and for soil protection. Archaeobotanical sampling facilitated the use of the charred plant material for radiocarbon dating of the soil profile, supported by the measurement of radionuclides 210Pb and 137Cs activity in order to estimate the age and stratigraphic integrity of the soil. An interesting record was obtained by archaeobotanical analyses of the lowermost layer, where wood charcoal and needles of fir (Abies alba) were identified and dated by AMS 14C. A discrepancy between the younger needle and much older charcoal could indicate an example of the old wood effect in archaeological chronology. The study has brought comprehensive results using environmental archaeology methods and sheds light on one of the stages of historical landscape transformation of the Early Modern Ages in central Europe. IANSA 2020 ● XI/1 ● 89–101 Ivana Šitnerová, Jaromír Beneš, Ivana Trpáková, Jiří Bumerl, Veronika Komárková, Tereza Majerovičová, Lenka Hrabáková, Kristina Janečková: Landscape Transformed: Archaeological, Historical and Environmental Dating of the Early Modern Field System in Valštejn, Czech Republic 90 a network of paths (Gojda, 2000). The visible parts of this hinterland can be typical field strips and agrarian terraces. The agrarian hinterland of a village came to be defined in central Europe by the traditional concept of German historical geography (in German “die Flur”: Krüger, 1967; Born, 1979; Denecke, 1979; Sperling, 1982). This school defines “die Flur” as the historically-developed structure of a village’s landholding, whose current layout is the result of many changes in dynamics, local economy and property ownership. The term “die Flur” was a big topic in German historical literature of the 19th century, frequently enriched with a certain ethnic significance. Attention has been paid in the last decades to the origins of different types of agrarian hinterland associated with various historical villages. Recent studies omit the ethnical meaning underpinning the historical circumstances of settlement activities (Žemlička, 2014). The German schools of agrarian history and historical geography were followed by ethnographic and historical research in Czechoslovakia and in the Czech Republic (Pohl, 1934–1935; Dohnal, 2003; Klír, 2003). Transformation of the landscape is observed primarily through the prism of medieval colonization (Klápště, 2005; 2012; Žemlička, 1997; 2014). Field systems and their patterns are, of course, an integral part of medieval and Early Modern villages to which they belong. The archaeology of medieval and Early Modern villages has primarily focused on their residential area, particularly on abandoned medieval settlement zones with buildings. Such interest in agrarian hinterland dates from the second half of the last century. New methods of remote sensing (Gojda, John eds., 2013; Holata et al., 2018) and environmental archaeology (Houfková et al., 2015; 2019; Hejcman et al., 2013a; 2013b) have contributed much to the research of the agrarian hinterland of villages. Thanks to this new research, it is now possible to resolve questions of dating, function and the characters of agrarian background effectively. One of the first archaeological studies focusing on the identification of the village agrarian hinterland in Bohemia was taken in the Kostelec nad Černými lesy region by Z. Smetánka and J. Klápště (Klápště, 1978; Klápště, Smetánka, 1979; Smetánka, Klápště, 1981), and in Moravia by V. Nekuda in the abandoned village Pfaffenschlag Figure 1. 1a: The map section with the Czech Republic within central Europe and the location of Valštejn (red dot) and others field systems under research (green dots: field systems around Oblík hill near Louny; Malonín near Míčovice; field systems around Rokštejn castle near Panská Lhota; and Debrné near Trutnov). 1b: Valštejn village illustrated on the first military mapping which took place from the 1760s to 1780s. The village had the German name of Wallstein. The scale of the map is 1:28000. Sources: Laboratory of Geoinformatics FE UJEP, Ministry of the Environment of the Czech Republic and Austrian State Archive/Military Archive in Vienna. 1c and 1d: Current landscape around Valštejn. Photo by T. Jůnek. 1a 1b