Long-term development of cultural landscape of Central Bohemia as a co-evolution of human impacts and natural processes

The project aims to enhance our understanding of the prehistoric landscape used and cultivated by man, to identify key stages in its long-term evolution and to study individual processes that cause it to change. The landscape's historic evolution is a highly complex process that can be studied only by using an interdisciplinary approach – one of the most efficient being the application of archaeology closely combined with palaeoecological techniques (like palynology, analysis of plant macroremains, palaeomalacology). The questions we ask have both historical and methodological focus. They deal with: spatial structure of settlement areas and the possibilities of its depiction in the landscape, the identifiability and form of prehistoric farming systems (including the importance of pastures and the role of forest in the prehistoric economy), the regeneration capacity of natural ecosystems and the reliability of pollen analysis in tracing settlement history.