New approaches to prehistoric land-use reconstruction in southwestern Germany

Botanical on-site and off-site data relating to Late Neolithic and Bronze Age settlement phases in south-western Germany are compared with a view to reconstructing economic and environmental change. The large differences between the Neolithic and Bronze Age as regards forest composition, crops and crop weeds, and charcoal input are explained in terms of different types of agronomic systems and hence cultural landscape. In the Late Neolithic, shifting cultivation, involving slash and burn, was practised with the result that the landscape was largely dominated by tall shrubs. In the Bronze Age there were more or less permanent arable fields with only short fallow phases. The agronomic system and the resulting cultural landscape was already similar to that of the medieval period and, especially, early medieval time.