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Herbert Aderbauer / Harald Kübler (Hg.), Die Sülchenkirche bei Rottenburg. Frühmittelalterliche Kirche – alte Pfarrkirche – Friedhofskirche – bischöfliche Grablege, Lindenberg i. Allgäu: Kunstverlag Josef Fink 2018. 550 S., zahlr. Farbabb. ISBN 978-3-95976-102-4. € 29,–

This review paper examines the potential of (geo)archaeological data of past human-environment systems to contribute to the development of sustainable land use and soil management strategies. Looking at past land use systems and their socio-economic background extends our understanding of the slow processes and low frequency events that appear to be the key in deciding whether land use systems lead to sustainability or to collapse. As an example, the paper focuses on so-called Anthropogenic Dark Earths (ADE). These highly fertile soils were managed or actively created by ancient cultures in different regions of the world. Since they are rich in humic matter and carbon, and are highly stable to biochemical oxidation, they appear very relevant both as a model for sustainable soil and land management systems and as a tool for climate change mitigation on different scales - local as well as global. The paper argues in favor of a historical perspective to learn about risks and possibilities of land use strategies. We propose a co-adaptive transdisciplinary problem-solving approach ("Archaeonics"), which includes the study of the past as well as respective technical and social implications for the future.

Agricultural landscapes (rural landscapes, agrolandscapes) are territories shaped by agricultural production. They have enabled the development of human civilizations and are a cultural achievement. Peasants, farmers and agricultural enterprises feed society. They have created agricultural landscapes for their business and habitats for their life. To understand transformation processes in agricultural landscapes, we analyse the history of agriculture with a special focus on Europe and Eurasia. Current agricultural landscapes in a crowded, globalized world are multifunctional, highly complex systems. They not only serve to produce food commodities and energy for the increasing and expanding urban population but also provide diverse ecosystem services and need to cater for the demands of the rural population. Current agriculture is highly productive in wealthy countries, but due to high inputs it is also responsible for environmental problems such as water pollution and loss of biodiversity. Industrial-style agriculture in large fields has resulted in increased productivity but simplified the structure of landscapes and eliminated elements of nature and rural culture. Major problems that urgently need to be addressed include trends towards disrupting natural cycles in agricultural production, soil and water degradation, ageing populations in villages and the breakdown of rural infrastructure. Agricultural landscape research provides analyses to understand these processes and helps elaborate sustainable scientific, technical and cultural solutions.

Der Bamberger Dom, das bedeutendste Bauwerk der Stadt, besteht seit gut 1000 Jahren. Prof. Dr. Walter Sage, nachmalig erster Inhaber des Lehrstuhls für Archäologie des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit (AMANZ) an der Universität Bamberg, führte dort von 1969-72 großangelegte Ausgrabungen durch. Er ließ nahezu das gesamte Hauptschiff öffnen, dazu große Bereiche der Seitenschiffe. Man traf Fundamente aller Bauphasen an, dazu viele Bestattungen und eine große Zahl von Kleinfunden. Diese Funde stammen zum Teil von der Innenausstattung des ersten Doms, dessen grundsätzliche Boden- und Wandgestaltung somit gut rekonstruierbar ist. Die wissenschaftliche Aufarbeitung der Funde – 50 Jahre nach ihrer Bergung – war Anlass und Inhalt einer Sonderausstellung im Historischen Museum, bewerkstelligt vom Lehrstuhl AMANZ in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Historischen Verein und dem Historischen Museum Bamberg, den Eigentümern der Funde und unterstützt vom Erzbistum Bamberg. Mit dieser Ausstellung und dem Begleitheft, beides hauptsächlich von Studierenden erarbeitet, feiert der Lehrstuhl AMANZ zudem sein 40-jähriges Bestehen.

espanolLas perspectivas sobre la aldea medieval y sobre el papel historico de los campesinos han cambiado a lo largo de la historia de la investigacion. Las opiniones tradicionales hechas desde la historia consideraban que la vida rural era inmutable y, por tanto, presumian que las aldeas tenian sus raices en el periodo de las migraciones. La investigacion moderna reconocio la formacion de la aldea medieval como un proceso complejo y de larga duracion que culmino en los siglos xi y xiii, dependiendo de cada region. Este articulo examina mas de cerca la situacion en el suroeste de Alemania, analizando la historia de la investigacion, por un lado, y ciertos episodios seleccionados de la historia rural medieval, por el otro. Este trabajo sugiere que, debido a los puntos de vista tradicionales sobre la estructura de la historia, la agencia de los campesinos ha sido infravalorada. EnglishThe perspectives on the medieval village and on the historical role of peasants have changed throughout the history of research. Traditional views on history saw rural life as unchangeable and therefore presumed that villages were rooted in the migration period. Modern research recognised the formation of the medieval village as a complex longterm process that, depending on the region, culminated in the 11th – 13th century. This paper takes a closer look at the situation in southwestern Germany, analysing research history on the one hand and selected episodes of medieval rural history on the other. The paper suggests that due to traditional views on the structure of history, peasants’ agency has been undervalued.

In dem vorliegenden Sammelband präsentieren Vertreter*innen verschiedener Disziplinen des Instituts für Archäologische Wissenschaften, Denkmalwissenschaften und Kunstgeschichte der Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg Erträge ihrer Forschungen. Dabei zeichnet sich in mehreren Beiträgen ein Alleinstellungsmerkmal des Instituts ab, das gemeinsam mit dem ihm verbundenen, 2016 gegründeten Kompetenzzentrum für Denkmalwissenschaften und Denkmaltechnologien (KDWT) über eine umfangreiche Geräteausstattung auf neuestem technischem Stand verfügt. Mehrere der hier versammelten Aufsätze rekurrieren auf Ergebnisse entsprechender naturwissenschaftlicher Untersuchungen, während andere sich in den Bahnen klassischer geistes- und kulturwissenschaftlicher Forschungen bewegen. Die archäologischen Beiträge befassen sich mit Ergebnissen und Perspektiven der „Feld-, Wald- und Wiesenachäologie“ (Rainer Schreg) und dem nordsyrischen Pilgerzentrum Resafa mit seiner ehemaligen „transkulturellen Urbanität“ (Michaela Konrad). Die Beiträge der Denkmalwissenschaften reflektieren Wertmaßstäbe und Zielvorstellungen des städtischen Denkmalschutzes (Gerhard Vinken) und behandeln die Herausforderungen, die sich dem Fach mit den von der Generalversammlung der Vereinten Nationen 2015 verabschiedeten Sustainable Development Goals stellen (Paul Bellendorf). Die kunstgeschichtlichen Beiträge präsentieren die Ergebnisse einer gemeinsam mit der Bauforschung vorgenommenen eingehenden Untersuchung der Querhausportale der Pariser Kathedrale (Stephan Albrecht, Stefan Breitling) und befassen sich mit Hans Baldung Griens Die Sintflut, einem Hauptwerk der Staatsgalerie in der Neuen Residenz in Bamberg (Wolfgang Brassat).

The formation of villages and the introduction of systematic three-field crop rotation transformed the landscape of western central Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. These processes have often been seen as an important progress of the medieval agriculture. This paper examines these developments from the per-spective of human ecology. There is some evidence to suggest a connection between village formation and the transformation of the cultural landscape in the High Middle Ages on the one hand and the Black Death in the late Middle Ages on the other. Recent archeological data suggests that these changes to the cultural landscape were in fact major factors in or preconditions for the fourteenth-century crisis.

Grain price (GP) volatility has been a central constituent of European commerce, with fluctuations in barley, rye and wheat prices having been carefully documented over centuries. However, a thorough understanding of the climatic and environmental drivers of long-term GP variations is still lacking. Here, we present a network of historical GP records from 19 cities in central and southern Europe for the 14th to 18th centuries. Spatial variability at interannual to multidecadal scales within this network was compared with reconstructed warm-season temperatures and hydroclimatic conditions. We show that European GPs are tightly coupled with historical famines and that food shortages coincide with regional summer drought anomalies. Direct correlations between historical GP and reconstructed drought indices are low, hardly exceeding r = -0.2. Yet if the analysis is focused on extreme events, the climatic controls on high-frequency price variations become obvious: GPs were exceptionally high during dry periods and exceptionally low during wet periods. In addition, we find that GP variations were affected by temperature fluctuations at multidecadal timescales. The influence of summer temperatures is particularly strong over the 1650-1750 period, subsequent to the Thirty Years’ War, reaching r = -0.40 at the European scale. This observation is supported by the lack of correlation among regional GP clusters during the period of hostilities and increased inter-regional correlation thereafter. These results demonstrate that the exchange of goods and spatial coherence of GP data in Europe were controlled both by socio-political and environmental factors, with environmental factors being more influential during peacetime.

This paper reports on the first documented evidence for Pre-Hispanic ridged fields in Panama (Chinina, Eastern Panama Province, Pacific), identified in online aerial photographs, and the results of the field work carried on in 2011. Aerial photography has been known as an extremely useful tool of archeological prospection for nearly one century. In recent years however it gained increasing importance by two reasons: First the availability of high quality aerial photographs via internet made it quite easy to start archeological surveys even in remote areas. Second archeological perspectives on past human societies changed in recent decades. Modern ecological problems caused an increasing interest in landscape archeology. In Panama, archaeobotanical and paleoecological studies were carried out by Dolores Piperno and her team, already since the 1980s. The results of this research contributed to understanding American agricultural development especially related to the manipulation and domestication of plants and human/environmental interactions. However, despite this important role of the Panamanian evidence for the overall discussion of the development of agriculture in tropical environments, there has been little data generated on agricultural practice and land use pattern until this project.

In recent years, scientific methods of bio- and geoarchaeology have become increasingly important for archaeological research. Political changes since the 1990s have reshaped the archaeological community. At the same time environmental topics have gained importance in modern society, but the debate lacks an historical understanding. Regarding medieval rural archaeology, we need to ask how this influences our archaeological research on medieval settlements, and how ecological approaches fit into the self-concept of medieval archaeology as a primarily historical discipline. Based mainly on a background in German medieval archaeology, this article calls attention to more complex ecological research questions. Medieval village formation and the late medieval crisis are taken as examples to sketch some hypotheses and research questions. The perspective of a village ecosystem helps bring together economic aspects, human ecology and environmental history. There are several implications for archaeological theory as well as for archaeological practice. Traditional approaches from landscape archaeology are insufficient to understand the changes within village ecosystems. We need to consider social aspects and subjective recognition of the environment by past humans as a crucial part of human–nature interaction. Use of the perspective of village ecosystems as a theoretical background offers a way to examine individual historical case studies with close attention to human agency. Thinking in terms of human ecology and environmental history raises awareness of some interrelations that are crucial to understanding past societies and cultural change.

As efforts to recognize the Anthropocene as a new epoch of geological time are mounting, the controversial debate about the time of its beginning continues. Here, we suggest the term Palaeoanthropocene for the period between the first, barely recognizable, anthropogenic environmental changes and the industrial revolution when anthropogenically induced changes of climate, land use and biodiversity began to increase very rapidly. The concept of the Palaeoanthropocene recognizes that humans are an integral part of the Earth system rather than merely an external forcing factor. The delineation of the beginning of the Palaeoanthropocene will require an increase in the understanding and precision of palaeoclimate indicators, the recognition of archaeological sites as environmental archives, and inter-linking palaeoclimate, palaeoenvironmental changes and human development with changes in the distribution of Quaternary plant and animal species and socio-economic models of population subsistence and demise.

In Germany early medieval rural settlements are known from a rising number of excavated sites. Rural architecture was a wooden architecture. Only churches were built in stone. A farmstead consisted of several buildings: the main house and several economic buildings as pit houses and storages. Before the 1980s, when large scale excavations became more and more common, there was little awareness of changes in rural settlement history. The formation of still existing villages was only late in the Middle Ages. However, even today it is difficult to understand the changes in rural architecture as there are distinct regional differences. Probably the 5th century on the one hand and the period of village formation between the 10th and 13th centuries on the other hand were the most innovative periods. This article provides a short characteristic of buildings and settlement organisation. He gives an outline of research history and identifies some recent trends and future perspectives of research.Tenemos conocimiento de los asentamientos rurales de la alta Edad Media en Alemania gracias a un número creciente de excavaciones arqueológicas. La arquitectura rural es una arquitectura de madera, reservándose la piedra para las iglesias. Las alquerías comprendían varias edificaciones: la casa principal y varias construcciones destinadas a fines económicos, como las viviendas semienterradas y almacenes. Antes de los años 80 del siglo pasado, cuando las excavaciones a gran escala se hicieron más habituales, se conocía poco sobre la evolución de la historia de los asentamientos rurales. Las aldeas que aún permanecen se formaron a finales de la Edad Media e incluso hoy resulta difícil entender los cambios que se produjeron en la arquitectura rural cuando existen diferencias regionales. Es probable que el periodo comprendido entre el siglo V, por una parte, y los siglos X y XIII por otra fue la de mayor innovación. El presente artículo ofrece un resumen de las características edificativas y la organización de los asentamientos, con un repaso de la historia de la investigación, las tendencias actuales y las perspectivas para investigaciones posteriores.

The site of Caricin Grad in south-eastern Serbia – currently listed on UNESCO’s tentative list – has been the subject of archaeological investigations for more than 100 years. For the last decades it has been the focus of a joint project of the Archaeological Institute in Belgrade and the Ecole Francaise de Rome. A reconstruction of the economic, environmental and social history of the city is the main objective of a cooperative project started in 2014 with the Romisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum Mainz. The remains of the early Byzantine complex of Caricin Grad show the features of a city built in the classical, Hellenistic-Roman tradition, combined with ecclesiastical Christian architecture. Based on the comparison of Byzantine text sources with the settlement’s topography and its architecture, Caricin Grad is supposed to be identical to Iustiniana Prima, a city newly founded by the Emperor Justinian as the region’s episcopal and administrative centre. With the period of occupation covering a mere 90 years, from circa AD 530 to circa AD 615, the site allows a rare archaeological “snapshot” of a short period of very intensive use, which furthermore remained undisturbed from later encroachments. Due to these circumstances, Caricin Grad offers the unique opportunity to analyse a city at the turn of the Late Antique era to the Early Medieval epoch and the complex issues associated with periods of cultural transition. Based on the perspective of human ecology and social sciences, the project will establish new approaches and investigate the concept of “city” during periods of cultural transition by using methods of archaeozoology, archaeobotany, geoarchaeology, soil science and GIS. The main topic addressed within this context, “Households, consumption and everyday life” will deal with single domestic units concerning methods of production, consumption and activity zones regarding comestible goods. This perspective on the town and its consumption will be complemented by a viewpoint on the surrounding landscape focussing on its resources and agrarian production.

Panamanian coarse handmade earthenware is part of the wide-ranging phenomenon of handmade Colono wares common in Latin America and the Caribbean during the colonial and post-colonial periods. This article presents an overview of vessel forms and decoration and discusses the possible influence of different cultural traditions, based on archaeological research in Panama. Comparisons are made with indigenous pottery and with medieval ceramics from southern Spain and North Africa. The results may be seen as a case study highlighting the significance of handmade pottery in relation to processes of ethnic and social identity, cultural interaction and contact.

This paper presents goals, methods, and preliminary results of a collaborative project investigating Neolithic settlement and land use of the southeastern Swabian Alb limestone plateau region in southwestern Germany. The project combines systematic surveys of plowed fields and analysis of large private collections to investigate site distributions on the plateau, which is largely poor in surface water but a source of regionally important chert raw material. GIS based comparisons of site locations in terms of soil type and their agricultural potential, distance to water, and distance to chert sources show that numerous sites from the Bandkeramik to the younger Neolithic are associated with either chert sources or high-quality settlement locations. A number of extensive private collections provide a rich foundation to investigate functional and chronological differences among site locations. Preliminary results of lithics and ceramics analyses of nine sites indicate chronological variability as well as dissimilar characteristics in blade core technology and abundance and types of retouched tools between chert-extraction sites and settlements., Journal of Neolithic Archaeology, 7 (2005)