arch_kraj

Author : MARTIN GOJDA

Publisher: ACADEMIA, Prague

Publication date: June, 2000

The first synthesis in the area of landscape history to be published in this country. The book, which stems from the author's many years of research in the fields of landscape archaeology and aerial survey, discusses research into historic cultural landscapes undertaken with the aid of disciplines on the archaeological periphery, such as settlement and historical geography, landscape ecology, cartography and history. It deals with the development of the shape of the European cultural landscape, the history of its settlement, and the means by which Man - from the development of agriculture to the era of the Industrial Revolution - has found a place in the environment.

The author's aim has been to capture the diversity of forms and processes that have characterised the colonisation and permanent settlement of natural landscapes. Attention is paid above all on the one hand to Bohemia as a typical landlocked region and on the other to Britain as an island. Numerous examples are also drawn from other European countries (Germany, Denmark, Spain, Poland, Romania), particularly in connection with the reconstruction of the appearance of European landscapes during the Imperial Roman era and the Middle Ages. The core of the pictorial part of the publication consists primarily of aerial photographs of particular components and complex wholes in historical landscapes (Bohemia, Moravia, Germany, Poland, Hungary, England, Scotland, Wales), of which the majority were taken by the author.

The volume is divided into three sections:

Archaeology: of sense and concepts - the major trends in the history and current practice of archaeological methodology and theory (general and specifically Czech approaches, problem areas, and the questions with which contemporary archaeology is faced).
Archaeology and ancestral landscapes - concepts of landscape in the arts, natural sciences, philosophy, anthropology and archaeology; the history of their study in a European context; an overview of scientific disciplines integrated into the study of archaeological landscapes and their content; space and time as the basic quantities of settlement processes; landscape and spatial archaeology - approaches to the interpretation of spatial relationships in prehistory and the Middle Ages.
European cultural landscape archetypes - basic (model) examples of the forms - archetypes - of historical landscape and their component categories in prehistory, protohistory, the Early and High Middle Ages and the modern period: settlement types, fortifications, funerary and ritual features, borders, communication, and exploited landscapes (fields, pastures, floodplains, forests, industrial zones etc.).

The book is intended for students of historical disciplines, anthropology, historical ecology and social geography. It should also be of interest to other enlightened readers such as history teachers, while also stimulating thought among professional archaeologists and historians. It contains extensive notes and references, organised so as not to interfere with the flow of the main text.