Past landscapes and present-day techniques: reconstructing submerged medieval landscapes in the western part of Sealand Flanders

Abstract

Tbe coastal wetlands of the former county of Flanders, situated on the border area of Belgium and the Netherlands, belong geographically to a late Holocene landscape that consists mainly of alternations of clay, peat beds and sand deposits. During the later middle ages and the sixteenth century, the old medieval landscape was heavily ravaged by marine influence. Tbe sixteenthcentury flooding carried out for military reasons bad especially wreaked havoc. Tbis 'flooding', which had put large parts of the area under water for many decades, plus a huge reorganisation of the whole infrastructure and field pattern afterwards, when new embankments took place, bad completely reshaped the medieval landscape. As a consequence, it requires more methodological skills as well as a multi-and even interdisciplinary approach to reconstruct the old cultural landscape.Tbe application of present-day techniques for processing information discovered via aerial archaeology and geoarchaeology, historical geography and social economic history, geography and geomorphology, could generate unexpected reconstructions and interpretations about the cultural landscape before c. 1600. Tbis article presents some preliminary results of this research project, which is focusing on a 'test area ' in Sea/and Flanders (the Netherlands). Although the struggle with water was omnipresent in this area, it stresses especially ihe importance of anthropogenic factors in the processes of land reclamation, land loss and land transformation.

Nieuw-Roeselare – landscape archaeological and historical geographical research on deserted medieval settlements in the borderlands of Flanders and Zealand

“…Part of the inventory research was done by researchers at Ghent University within the 'Verdwenen cultuurlandschappen in het grensgebied van Vlaanderen en Nederland' project. This focussed on the medieval landscapes and lost villages in the western part of Zeeuws-Vlaanderen and the adjacent regions of Flanders (Kuipers 2002: 6-8;De Kraker 2004: 106-110;Vanslembrouck et al 2005;Lehouck et al 2007: 231-241;Gelorini et al 2010;Trachet 2011).…”

“…Both major storm surges and military inundations flooded large areas of the region. Not only did this result in the loss and abandonment of settlements and villages, 17 th century re-embankments and infrastructural reorganisations also covered and reshaped the original medieval landscapes of the region (Buisman 1995(Buisman , 1996Vanslembrouck et al 2005;Lehouck et al 2007). The modern-day polder landscape therefore does not easily reveal its history.…”

Geoarchaeological prospection of a medieval manor in the dutch polders using an electromagnetic induction sensor in combination with soil augerings

“…To the west of the rectangular moated site, the anomalies indicated the entrance way, probably connected to the Ruschevliet road. Parallel to the entrance way, the whole site was flanked by small ditches in the northern and southern parts that indicated the late-Medieval field system (Vanslembrouck et al, 2005). The ditch parcel in the southern part was transformed and reoriented, probably in the middle of the 17th century.…”

“…The complex was probably built in the 12th century. The manor was temporarily an independent priory of the abbey, but from the second half of the 14th century on it was a farm that was leased out by the St. Peters Abbey (Vanslembrouck, Lehouck, & Thoen, 2005). The Medieval site was lost during the Eighty Years War (1566-1648) between the Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands and the Spanish authority.…”

“…Due to recent archaeological and historical research involving new methods, the center of the Medieval manor Ruschevliet was identified with high certainty somewhere within an agricultural field close to the village of Schoondijke in the autumn of 2004 (Vanslembrouck et al, 2005). Relict mapping, field walking, and a coarse auger campaign were then conducted on the field, resulting in the localization of a moated site (Figure 2a).…”