On the time-lag in the dating of historical settlements: Reply to Kolář and Szabó (2021)

Fanta, Václav; Zouhar, Jan; Beneš, Jaromír; Bumerl, Jiří; Sklenička, Petr

doi:10.1016/j.jas.2021.105391

Cited by 1 publication

(2 citation statements)

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“…Since it is expected that the field pattern types differed across the centuries 83 , 87 , 88 , we wanted to include the age of the villages as one of the predictors. Because the dating of the origin of historical settlements by widely-available written sources is highly biased 89 , 90 , we decided to work with archaeologically dated settlements only. We used a database from our previous research 89 , which contains a subset from the Archaeological Database of Bohemia 151 .…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ecological and historical factors behind the spatial structure of the historical field patterns in the Czech Republic

Fanta

Beneš²,

Zouhar

et al. 2022

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Historical field systems are an essential part of the traditional cultural landscape of societies with primarily agricultural subsistence. They embody many functions and values, as they affect the productional, ecological and hydrological functioning of the landscape, its cultural values, the way people perceive the landscape, and their impact on present-day farming. As an aspect of the historical landscape, field systems are a topic investigated in landscape archaeology, environmental studies, historical geography, landscape ecology, and related disciplines. Historical field systems can form many complex spatial structures, shapes and patterns. This paper focuses on identifying environmental and historical/cultural driving forces during the formation and the historical development of various field pattern types. We worked with 523 settlements established in the medieval to the early modern period (approx. 900–1600 AD) in the present-day Czech Republic. We have determined the proportions of different field pattern types in the examined cadastres and have statistically compared them with a variety of environmental and geographical predictors. Our results indicate a strong influence of environmental predictors (terrain undulation, cadastre size), the impact of specific historical events and associated social changes (e.g. land confiscations by the state in the seventeenth century), and a significant relationship between field pattern types and settlement layout types. Furthermore, we have observed the different adaptations of field pattern types to similar environmental conditions, as well as the impact of social and political factors on the processes of landscape formation. Our paper provides the first detailed analysis of the geographical distribution of traditional field systems on the scale of an entire modern state, and emphasizes the importance of transdisciplinary research on cultural landscapes.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…1 D) in the late medieval and modern period. However, her research was based on dating from written records, which systematically provides dating that is younger than archaeological dating 89 , 90 . She also surveyed a sub-mountainous borderland area, which was probably colonized later than the inland of the country.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%