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VIII/1/2017
INTERDISCIPLINARIA ARCHAEOLOGICA
NATURAL SCIENCES IN ARCHAEOLOGY
homepage: http://www.iansa.eu
Book reviews
Volume VIII ● Issue 1/2017 ● Pages 95–96
Geschichte der Kulturlandschaft.
Enstehungsursachen und
Steurerungsfaktoren der Entwicklung
der Kulturlandschaft, Lebensraum- und
Artenvielfalt in Mitteleuropa
History of Cultural Landscape. Causes
of the Origin and Driving Forces
of Landscape, Habitat and Species
Diversity Changes in Central Europe
Peter Poschlod
Eugen Ulmer KG, Stuttgart (Hohenheim).
2015. ISBN 978-3-8001-7983-1 (hardcover)
by inhabitants of the medieval Holy Roman
Empire. In each of these periods and socio-
political units, the landscape developed
under the anthropic pressure, leading to
the formation of a specifc cultural mode,
which was substantially constrained by the
setting of the geographical area.
The book, as the author admits in his
introduction, has been in the process and
its material collected over the last twenty
years. Conceptually, the book’s topic is not
new within the German scientifc literature;
its predecessors can be seen in several older
writings and in a rather popular volume by
Hansjörg Küster (1996), who described
the development of the Central European
landscape from the Ice Age up to the
present. In comparison with Küster’s book,
Poschod’s
Geschichte der Kulturlandschaft
is more scientifc and, on the whole, broadly
more useable in daily scientifc practice,
containing as it does 1 589 references,
all connected via a system of numbers
directly within the text of the book. Such a
respectable amount of references, as well as
the richness of argumentation, makes this
book the fundamental base for any work in
the postglacial history of nature in central
Europe.
The frst, slightly shorter, chapter deals
with the origins of the Central European
landscape, along with the constraining
processes formed by vegetation, animals
and humans. It explains the roots of the
Central European cultural landscape in
the Neolithic period. The timing of the
landscape transformation at the Neolithic
period is generally correct; however, some
anthropic infuences seem to be older, for
example, concerning the anthropic impact
in the Mesolithic period. Conceptually,
this part represents rather a traditional
view. A mixture of some local elements
of nature with a certain amount of species
from the Near East via the Balkans, and
the western ways via the Rhône valley,
with domesticated species dispersion
and transmission, demonstrates the
roots of the Central European landscape
transformation in the Neolithic period.
Stories of domesticated plants and animals
are narrated from the perspective of the
natural sciences. To start the explanation
with animals, however, does seem a little
unusual, as they were domesticated long
after plants. The author omits to mention
a long period of wild plant species
cultivation, and recent trends in plant
domestication (
e.g.
Weiss
et al.
2006), but
it would demand another distinct chapter.
This step appears to be unnecessary as the
book is about Central Europe. The issue of
the origins of agriculture, therefore, could
be regarded as a traditional introduction
deduced necessarily from generally-known
facts. Thus recent views on the origins of
agriculture are not mentioned (see, for
example, the current conceptualisation by
D. Fuller
et al.
2014).
From the Eurasian perspective, the
Neolithic transformation is crucial, because
in this period Central Europe acts as a
prolonged fnger of the Near East. The
concept of the south and south-eastern
elements in the Central European landscape
and the phenomenon of the difusion and
adaptation of agriculture is generally correct
and enlightening. The author ofers a rich
outline of the processes of plant and animal
migration, which formed the frst large
transformation of the landscape. During
the Neolithic period, not only was there a
new package of staple food plants used,
but also a large amount of archaeophytes is
recorded in archaeobotanical assemblages.
However, some details are surprising
and maybe disputable. For example, water
chestnut (
Trapa natans
) has been widely
used as a staple food and cultivated in
the Mesolithic period (Zvelebil 1994).
Peter Poschlod discusses its use in the
Neolithic period and later. In this context,
the accessibility of water chestnut in
19
th
century trade is very surprising and
interesting. It is just one of the reasons
why environmental archaeologists should
read this book carefully. Reason enough
not only in the case of water chestnut,
but in many other species that the author
describes. Although we could discuss the
incoming and difusion of “the Neolithic”
elements in our natural environment and the
It is difcult to fnd a proper box for this
book. Simply said, it is a book on the edge
between vegetation ecology, landscape
history and archaeology, written by a
vegetation ecologist and botanist, who
is experienced in other sciences. Peter
Poschlod, equipped by a vast knowledge
concerning landscape and its history,
suggests an amazing set of stories that have
occurred in the central European landscape
since the beginning of agriculture – in
320 pages. The author defnes Central
Europe as a geographical region under
the long, intensive, and invariably similar
infuence of Neolithic societies, followed
by Bronze Age people, Romans and, fnally,
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IANSA 2017 ● VIII/1 ● 95–96
Book Reviews
96
role of indigenous humans in the Central
European region, the frst chapter of the
book brings remarkable material about
cultural landscape origins, discusses the
steppe elements in the climatic optimum,
the structure of the dominant wood species,
and the role of wild herbivores. In this sense
the frst chapter is as good an introduction
to the general topic as any.
The most valuable part of the book can be
represented by its immense second chapter
concerning the Central European landscape
transformation after the Neolithic period.
It is an excellent chapter: real landscape
archaeology seen by a researcher who
integrates his extensive knowledge of
biology, ecology, archaeology and history.
It is maybe for the frst time in European
literature that we read such a complex
story from an environmental perspective.
What is to be found in this book? A
detailed description of (pre)historical
feld systems, the origins of meadows,
the seasonality of agriculture, and many
other subjects – all and everything related
to the historical, social and, in particular,
climatic development. The information
collected in Table 22, which summarizes
the almost forgotten plant materials used
in an ethnographic context, is really
fascinating. Today we are familiar with the
use of willow twigs for making baskets,
and maybe with the applications of several
other plants, but a look at the list of species
will teach us that the reality of the past was
substantially richer. In medieval higher
society, luxury and imported species were
used, shaping a new world of plants in
medieval towns, monasteries and gardens.
Again, for the youngest periods of Central
Europe the author makes connections
between climatic, social and biological
development.
For all the above-mentioned reasons,
Peter Pochlod’s book makes an
extraordinary source of information and
becomes the new base for environmental
history in Central Europe. The German
language makes this book accessible
to many readers in Central Europe, but
an English translation would be a good
editorial step – one which would make this
work much more widely known. I fully
recommend such an action.
Jaromír Beneš
References
FULLER, D. Q., DENHAM, T., ARROYO-
KALIN, M., LUCAS, L., STEVENS, C. J.,
QIN, L., ALLABY, R. G., PURUGGANAN,
M. D., 2014: Convergent evolution and
parallelism in plant domestication revealed
by an expanding archaeological record.
Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences of the United States of America
111/17, 6147–6152.
KÜSTER, H. 1996:
Geschichte der Landschaft
in Mitteleuropa.
C.H.Beck, München.
WEISS, E., KISLEV, M. E., HARTMANN,
A., 2006: Autonomous cultivation before
domestication.
Science
312/5780, 1608–1610.
ZVELEBIL, M. 1994: Plant use in the Mesolithic
and its role in the transition to farming.
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society
60,
35–74.