Investigation into the landscape, medieval occupation in relation to the development of the Rokštejn manor and its neighbours
The research into the castle hinterland concentrates on the reconstruction of the area’s development and is therefore interlinked with an analysis of written and cartographic sources.
The reconstruction of the manor and its changes can be facilitated with the help of field prospecting and records of vanished settlements with an agricultural economy as well as the finds of production and mining facilities within the limits of a single manor. The assistance of written sources in the reconstruction of occupation is essential while an analysis of the historical landscape based on walking through the terrain and taking samples indicates the basic subsistence strategies in the region and changes in using the landscape and in the strategies of the village economies based on agriculture or in the strategies of the manors and their orientation.
The strategy of the economies of the individual settlements is documented and analysed on a smaller segment of the landscape with an attempted reconstruction of the residences and their primary economic hinterland, such as a village and its arable land. The reconstruction of the original areas of land used in agriculture is founded on a few basic facts that we try to combine in order to determine the level of sufficiency and the yield of medieval and modern-age agriculture. An invaluable source for these analyses is a walk through the landscape and identification of past anthropogenic features (settlements and their agricultural hinterland), laser scanning of the landscape, cartographic sources and written documents (urbaria, Moravian land registers).
The research includes the taking of samples using a soil probe and their analysis, the establishment of the basic stratigraphies and reconstruction of the cultural layers in the anthropogenic areas, taking the samples for the reconstruction of the natural environment and using the data from pedological analyses carried out in the investigated region.
Research into the Landscape, Medieval Settlement in Relation to the Extraction of Raw Materials
The vast territory of the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands is a typical example of the group of old Hercynian – Variscan crystalline highlands (Mittelgebirge), which take up a considerable area in Central Europe. In terms of climate and vegetation indicators and synantrophy it belongs to peripheries, which on the other hand makes it one of the territories with the most intensive colonisation in the Middle Ages. And it is right here that we find unique evidence of the fundamental process of the origins of the European cultural landscape. During the study we combine archaeological, archive, archaeobotanical and geoscience research into a single and, to a great extent, robust statement on the dynamic and long-term process of medieval colonisation, deforestation and extraction of raw materials simultaneously in the heart and on the periphery of the two neighbouring Přemyslid lands.
Alongside the various types of settlement precincts proper the subject of research includes landscape relics after the mining of ores and vanished ore processing and metallurgical facilities. Their narrative is complemented by the study of the stratigraphy of the flood plains providing essential off-site data. In addition, the research successfully detected and examined relics of medieval forests preserved as a result of the permanent anaerobic conditions and stagnation of water.
This particular type of research fills gaps in Central European archaeological and historical environmental studies and thanks to the focus on the little known Middle Ages is pioneering in nature. The theoretical, methodological and instrumental side of the scientific research corresponds with the principles of an interdisciplinary approach, while the questions that remain are essentially cultural-historical.
