Power Centres and Marginal Landscapes: Tracking Pre- and Post-Conquest (Late Iron Age and Medieval) Land-Use in the Cēsis Castle Hinterland, Central Latvia

ABSTRACT

During the late Iron Age, the eastern Baltic was inhabited by Finno-Ugric and Baltic speaking societies whose territories were conquered in the thirteenth century as a result of the crusades. This paper examines the degree to which indigenous landscapes were transformed as a result of the crusades, and the evidence for maintenance of indigenous land-use practices. Vegetation and land-use history are reconstructed using palynological data from Cēsis castle and its terriitory. Comparison is made with selected palynological, archaeological and documentary data across Livonia (Latvia and Estonia) and contrasted with the greater impact of the crusades in nearby Prussia. Despite the emergence of key power centres in the medieval period, including towns and castles such as Cēsis, many parts of the rural landscape remained largely unchanged by the crusades, particularly in those more marginal landscapes studied in this paper. Lower intensity land-use can be linked to poor agricultural soils but also reflect the limited colonisation of rural landscapes beyond the major towns and castles. Indigenous societies and practices survived to a greater degree, with later agricultural intensification in the fourteenth century reflecting the increasing political stability, growth of urban centres, establishment of serfdom and the development of the manorial system.

KEYWORDS:

• Palaeoecology
• land-use
• crusades
• Iron Age
• medieval period
• Livonia

Acknowledgements

The research leading to this publication has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) under grant agreement No.263735. The authors thank Gundars Kalnins for his invaluable guidance and assistance during the course of work at Cēsis, and for helping selecting sites for coring, and to Rowena Banerjea, Kevin Williams, Rob Batchelor and Jenny Austin during fieldwork. The authors thank the reviewers for their helpful comments on the manuscript.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The research leading to this publication has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) under grant agreement No. 263735.

Notes on contributors

Alex Brown

Alex Brown is Principal Geoarchaeologist at Wessex Archaeology and a visiting academic at the University of Reading. His research uses palaeoecology to investigate vegetation and land-use change, particularly associated with the conquest and colonisation of European medieval frontier landscapes. His research also includes woodland history and wetland and intertidal geoarchaeology.

Aleks Pluskowski

Aleks Pluskowski is an Associate Professor of Medieval Archaeology, writes on the environmental archaeology of frontier societies in medieval Europe, especially those associated with crusading. Among his recent books are: The Archaeology of the Prussian Crusade: Holy War and Colonisation (London 2013) and Environment, Colonization, and the Baltic Crusader States (Turnhout 2019).