The Establishment of New Units of Production in Carolingian Times: Making Early Medieval Sources Relevant for Environmental History

Sonnlechner, Christoph

doi:10.1484/j.viator.2.300191

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Last but not least, archival research on landscape history in Europe can reach back to the 8 th century (e.g. Sonnlechner 2004) although environmental historians have predominantly dealt with the 19 th and 20 th centuries (Szabó and Hédl 2011). Combining the methodological opportunities offered by the individual disciplines, seven centuries appear to be a temporal scale for which relatively high resolution can be achieved to which each discipline can significantly contribute.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trends and events through seven centuries: the history of a wetland landscape in the Czech Republic

et al. 2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Environmental change can be viewed as the combined result of long-term processes and singular events. While long-term trends appear to be readily available for observation (in the form of temporal comparisons or space-for-time substitution), it is more difficult to gain information on singular events in the past, although these can be equally significant in shaping ecosystems. We examined the past 700 years in the history of a lowland wetland landscape in the Czech Republic with the help of palaeoecological, ecological, landscape archaeological, and archival data. Macrofossil and pollen data were compared to known drainage works in the area and historical climatological data. Trends and events in habitat conditions were assessed using species indicator values. Results showed that ecological succession was the general process in the study area, detected as a trend towards eutrophication, desiccation and vegetation closure. Short-term events influenced development at the sites mainly from the second half of the 19 century. This is consistent with drainage history, although bias related to sample frequency cannot be excluded. On the whole, long-term trends and discrete events were complementary on different scales. We conclude that humans facilitated and accelerated background processes, which can be most likely associated with the succession of open wetlands towards terrestrial ecosystems.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%