Landscape and history: A multidisciplinary approach

Human societies have inhabited parts of the Central European country of Austria for thousands of years. The development process shoping the landscape by this long period of human impact remains poorly understood. The present study is an attempt to research landscape history on a local scale and compares an alpine, pre-alpine and midland-village area in Austria. We have developed an appropriate concept to describe the landscape ecology features of the study areas in several stages of the past from 1733 on. The landscape analysis is based on the interpretation of different kinds of historical data (e.g., documents, maps) going back to the pre-industrial epoch, which has - at least in terms of landscape ecology - hardly been accessible until now. An important aim of the study is to localize the historical information in the landscape. Individual plots can be traced back even to the early 14th century. Based on the quality of the available historical data, the historical landscape is analysed with regard to categories such as form and intensity of land use, distribution of nutrients and water as well as the pattern of landscape elements and their ecological functions. The comparison of present stages with former ones yields detailed knowledge on the dynamics and stability of landscape structure. This approach allows present-day land units to be identified as a result of long-term development going back to Medieval times. The primary aim of the study is to analyze factors that bring about change or resist it by creating stability. We therefore examine factors coupling landscape structure, agricultural production and population development. For this reason, we have studied the people and the evidence for their labor over a period of 400 years (1400-1800). Besides demographic data of the 18th and 19th century, historical registrar material has been collected; it enabled the land tenures to be reconstructed from the 15th to the 19th century. This type of data is a valuable source of information for investigating the socio-economic status of a local population or its farmsteads. The collected data reveal similarities in trends between time series of demography, land holding stability and landscape ecology features. A theoretical model shows how population, production and natural resources are connected in the investigated pre-modern communities.