Historical Landscape Archaeology in Czech Republic within Central European Context: Approaches, Theories and Methods

Summary

Historical landscape research was traditionally connected with the settlement history approach. Archaeology focused on material evidence completing historical studies of the settlement development (esp. settlement advancement in the Early Middle Ages, settlement transformation, and ‘colonisation’ of uplands in the High Middle Ages) and its decline in the 15th century. The position of archaeology could be seen in localising, dating of deserted components and reconstruction of settlement pattern. After the era of stagnation of these research activities, the current concept of landscape archaeology has been constituted in the 1990s (break-up of the totalitarian system enabled closer contacts with the new trends in world landscape archaeology).Our research is focused on the two main topics: 1) Settlement and land-use changes between the 15th and the 20th century. It is based on the analysis of formal and spatial settlement attributes as well as environmental context using GIS. 2) The social-economic system of rural settlement. Study of the agrarian, non-agrarian production and social structure study is based on the comparative research of both archaeological and documentary evidence.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2014   •
• Foregrounding the Landscape in Archaeology

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): SYM-38,12