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This paper promotes the application of geoarchaeology—joint studies using historical, archaeological and heritage approaches—to the conservation and management practice of castles and landscapes in the context of ‘castlescapes’. Using case studies from recent research on medieval castles in frontier regions of the eastern Baltic and Spain, it demonstrates how geoarchaeology can create synergies between on-site and off-site environments and between cultural and natural heritage and draw valuable information from soils and sediments about the changing form and function of spaces within castles, and about the links between these spaces and activities in their hinterlands. Geoarchaeological approaches can also illuminate the diachronic biographies that hide from visitors in the buried archaeology of castles, which to most visitors would be blank cavasses, but which can provide snap-shots of castle life in the context of a wider landscape. Castles are commonly publicly recognised as being important historical monuments, but from a heritage perspective they are often presented in isolation from their associated historical territories, and often (especially in frontier regions) appropriated within modern politics, which has influenced both heritage management decisions and research frameworks.

The crusades against eastern Baltic societies from the end of the twelfth century saw the reorganisation of the conquered territories into new Christian polities - Livonia and Prussia - largely ruled by a militarised theocracy consisting of the Teutonic Order, bishops and cathedral chapters. This was accompanied by the reconfiguration of land ownership and intensification in resource exploitation aimed at sustaining the new regime, alongside the growing urban and rural populations. An ecclesiastical administration was also imposed on the conquered territories, alongside the construction of churches and monasteries, confronting native religions which attached sacred importance to natural places and cemeteries. This paper compares the transformation of sacred landscapes in Livonia and Prussia and provides an interpretation of variability in relation to theocratic authority, native and migrant populations. Encompassing the role of settlements, cemeteries and the tempo of change, the paper is situated within a new archaeological framework contextualising religious transformation in the Middle Ages. It also provides the first detailed, comparative perspective for the two regions. The landscape was not uniformly transformed and its variability, particularly the post-crusade endurance and even proliferation of native sacred sites, reflects the limits of theocratic authority and the pragmatic necessities of ruling a conquered population. That strong contrasts exist in the nature and process of Christianisation in even superficially similar areas like Livonia and Prussia should serve as a warning to resist generalising across limited data sets.