Past human impact in a mountain forest: geoarchaeology of a medieval glass production and charcoal hearth site in the Er
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Past human impact in a mountain forest: geoarchaeology of a medieval glass production and charcoal hearth site in the Erzgebirge, Germany Johann Friedrich Tolksdorf 1 & Knut Kaiser 2 & Libor Petr 3 & Christoph Herbig 4 & Petr Kočár 5 & Susann Heinrich 6 & Franziska D. H. Wilke 2 & Martin Theuerkauf 7 & Alexander Fülling 8 & Matthias Schubert 9 & Frank Schröder 9 & Roman Křivánek 5 & Lars Schulz 10 & Alexander Bonhage 11 & Christiane Hemker 9 Received: 5 November 2019 / Accepted: 31 March 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Since the twelfth century, forest areas in the upper reaches of the low mountain ranges of central Europe provided an important source of wood and charcoal especially for mining and smelting as well as glass production. In this case study from a site in the upper Erzgebirge region (Ore Mountains), results from archeological, geophysical, pedo-sedimentological, geochemical, anthracological, and palynological analyses have been closely linked to allow for a diachronic reconstruction of changing land use and varying intensities of human impact with a special focus on the fourteenth to the twentieth century. While human presence during the thirteenth century can only be assumed from archeological material, the establishment of glass kilns together with quartz mining shafts during the fourteenth century has left behind more prominent traces in the landscape. However, although glass production is generally assumed to have caused intensive deforestation, the impact on this site appears rather weak compared to the sixteenth century onwards, when charcoal production, probably associated with emerging mining activities in the region, became important. Local deforestation and soil erosion has been associated mainly with this later phase of charcoal production and may indicate that the human impact of glass production is sometimes overestimated.
Communicated by Wolfgang Cramer Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-020-01638-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Johann Friedrich Tolksdorf [email protected]
Alexander Fülling [email protected]
Knut Kaiser [email protected]
Matthias Schubert [email protected]
Libor Petr [email protected]
Frank Schröder [email protected]
Christoph Herbig [email protected]
Roman Křivánek [email protected]
Petr Kočár [email protected]
Lars Schulz [email protected]
Susann Heinrich [email protected] Franziska D. H. Wilke [email protected] Martin Theuerkauf [email protected]
Alexander Bonhage [email protected] Christiane Hemker [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
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Reg Environ Change
(2020) 20:71
Keywords LiDAR . Forest clearance . Glasswork . Mining . Pollen analysis . Soil erosion
Introduction Mountai
