Late Medieval and Early Modern Modifications of Regular Open Field Systems in Bohemia

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F68378076%3A_____%2F16%3A00467547" target="_blank" >RIV/68378076:_____/16:00467547 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

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DOI - Digital Object Identifier

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Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Late Medieval and Early Modern Modifications of Regular Open Field Systems in Bohemia

Original language description

The presented analyses provides extraordinary insight into the basic principles and arrangement of land division in Central Europe at the beginning of the Thirty Years War. It helps us to understand the impact of late medieval and early modern alterations of field systems, which considerably modified later arrangements. Two particularly impactful modifications were the late medieval construction of fish ponds, which turned meadows and adjacent fields into new water reservoirs, and the intensification of grain production on manors with the associated extension of demesne lands. Another crucial point in the development of the analysed field system is the devastating effect of the Thirty Years War as manifested in the desertion of both peasants’ and cottagers’ farmsteads. Land tenure was altered over the course of the conflict through the desertion of tillage of many plots and their subsequent reallocation to other farms. Analysed archival sources have allowed to document the desertion of many plots of arable land and to prove that before the war local deforestation reached an extent that has never been matched since. The magnitude of the changes in the land use ratio has never before been examined in the Czech Republic. To some extent, the chaotic restoration of farms, primarily during the 17th century, resulted in the land reform that unified and organized the land tenure of particular categories of farmsteads, namely peasants and cottagers. The reform modified in some cases the distribution of the given field system into particular furlongs. From a methodological perspective, the inadequacy of 18th- and 19th-century cadastral maps for studying European medieval field systems has been confirmed by the present analysis. This analysis is thus an important source of our current knowledge surrounding the types of modifications Central European cultural landscapes might have undergone during the early modern period.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_x - Unclassified - Peer-reviewed scientific article (Jimp, Jsc and Jost)

CEP classification

AC - Archaeology, anthropology, ethnology

OECD FORD branch

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Project

<a href="/en/project/GAP410%2F11%2F1287" target="_blank" >GAP410/11/1287: Ethnographical atlas of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia : Vernacular architecture, settlements and dwellings</a><br>

Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2016

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Bohemia. Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kultur der böhmischen Länder

ISSN

0523-8587

e-ISSN

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Volume of the periodical

56

Issue of the periodical within the volume

1

Country of publishing house

DE - GERMANY

Number of pages

27

Pages from-to

35-61

UT code for WoS article

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EID of the result in the Scopus database

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