Spatial analyses of medieval fields geochemistry reveals past land use management : preliminary results
Abstrakt
Our study is focused on human impact on nature and on the inter-relationships between these two entities. As there was always a huge shift towards interdisciplinarity in environmental archaeology, we aim on the complex study of medieval fields.
Our research is performed in touch with nature sciences, mainly soil geochemistry, and also with archaeology and history. Our research is methodically based on broad spatial sampling of soil samples and mapping of basic soil conditions.
We use XRF spectrometry as a main tool for multi-elemental analyses. The crucial factor of our methods is also a design of sampling based on a respect to historical land and land use features like parts of village field system or possesions of the households.
Since there were performed many researches in the built up areas of villages and also of houses, we focus more on the fields systems. Some of our sampling reached ca 2 kms from the village households, depending on the field system area.
Also macroscopic visual method of getting data and knowledge of the site is crucial.