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Spessart goes Europe
The Historic Landscape Characterisation of a German Upland Region
Introduction
The Archaeological Spessart Project (ASP) is a “ bottom-up” initiative,
which started in 1994. Initially only concerned with very traditional archaeological
research in an area, which was scientifically neglected for a long time, the
project continually shifted its focus towards a holistic approach to understanding
this cultural landscape. In 1998 a “Spessart GIS” was initiated
to establish a modern approach of collecting and processing data on this landscape.
Practical experience led to a form of Historical Landscape Characterisation
(HLC), without being defined as such at the time. It became clear that we had
to start analysis from the perspective of the present landscape, even though
we aimed at describing the history of a landscape and how it changed through
time. We also understood, that traditional archaeological approaches of mapping
dots and lines (findings, sites, historic roads) had to be adjusted to the landscape
scale for us to define and describe whole areas and the complete landscape.
Thus, important features of HLC were implemented in the Spessart GIS. It was,
however, contact with colleagues from English Heritage, which allowed bundling
joint experiences within a wider discussion on the aims and philosophy of HLC.
This discussion became a major focus of the European partner project initiated
by the ASP, Pathways to Cultural Landscapes (PCL), which achieved funding from
the EU for a 3-year campaign. This paper shall highlight some of the experiences
gained from the discussions to date and the importance of networking and international
exchange for studying, understanding and communicating the values of cultural
landscapes.
The author wishes to give a German perspective on HLC, but it is important
to stress, that it is exactly that - one German perspective, not the German
perspective. It would be impossible to give a general German perspective, not
in the least due to the federal structure of heritage management in Germany
and the very different approaches used in individual federal states (the Länder).
One should also mention that for studying cultural landscapes HLC and the use
of GIS is not very wide spread in German heritage management, although there
are several individual project currently in progress e.g. in the Rhineland or
the Black Forest. However, no schemes comparable to the nation wide campaigns
for HLC by English Heritage, in Scotland or Wales presently exist. As a “bottom-up”
initiative, ASP has links with local and regional heritage management, as well
as local governments, but started its work more from a scientific the applied
perspective concerning planning and developing needs. As a non-profit association
or charity, ASP is not directly involved in planning processes, but can take
influence on decision through discussion and persuasion. The ASP perspective
is therefore not representative but highly subjective. By and large, ASP was
probably more strongly influenced from networking with partners all over Europe
than most specifically German approaches.
Short description of the Spessart area
The Spessart is a large upland region dominated by woodland. Together with
the Odenwald and the Rhön, this mountainous region forms the northern border
of Southern-Germany. To the south of the Spessart we find the river Main, which
separates the Spessart from the Odenwald in the west. Giving direct access to
the Rhine valley, the river Main offers a strategically important shipping route,
which may already have been used in the Neolithic age.; the same is probably
true for other ways of access to the Rhine-valley. One of these is still used
today by the A 3, Germany´s most frequented highway.
The Spessart was first settled at the beginning of the Neolithic period. Human
impact has altered this landscape frequently from a forested area to pasture
and arable land back to forest. Especially the 19th and the first half of the
20th century were times of poverty, thus creating an image of a neglected landscape
without history.
Today the Spessart is a highly interesting landscape - but only after the
second look. It is a region with two major problems: its administrative structure
and its image. Let us start with the administrative structure. Today the Spessart
is divided between five districts, but none of these is a pure “Spessart
district”. They all include fractions of the Spessart, but much larger
and more densely populated areas outside of it. Thus, the Spessart is not the
main concern of any of the districts. More important still, the Spessart comprises
areas of two different German federal states: the larger, southern part belongs
to Bavaria, the smaller, northern part to Hesse. To understand the importance
if this border, one must understand federal system in Germany. The states are
very autonomous, a right, which is especially valued in the “Free state
of Bavaria”. Most of all, culture, by constitution, is an affair of the
“Länder”, the federal states. Thus 16 different laws on the
cultural heritage exist, while even more public structures deal with it. This
situation provides difficulties when trying to define a common picture of the
Spessart region. Research on both sides of the border has followed different
aspects, as early as 1814 / 1815, when the German states were formed as a consequence
of the Napoleonic wars. But obstacles even arise at the most basic technical
level, making it virtually impossible to bring together the maps produced by
the state heritage managements in the two federal states. They use different
scale, projection and even a different standard meridian. You can try as you
like, but you cannot cut and paste the maps and “simply” form one
for the complete region.
The founding of the ASP
Theses problems became very obvious when in 1994 an initiative was formed,
to develop the Spessart region across the political borders. Local and regional
administrations, public, private and economic institutions worked together to
form the “Bayerisch-Hessisches Spessartprojekt” (the Bavarian-Hessian
Spessart Project). In September 1994 a working group “archaeology”
was brought to life. For the first time archaeologists from state management,
local museums and universities in the region met on a regular basis to exchange
information and experiences and define common goals for the future. But the
basis of information was poor. One reason was the lack of interest in heritage
management on all administrative levels. Today the Spessart is a densely forested
area and therefore the threat to potential archaeological monuments was estimated
as being low. Given the degree of destruction of archaeological monuments in
the urban centres as well as areas of industrialised agriculture, the Spessart
was a resort of law degree development. The few resources had to be directed
to other areas, systematic investigation could not take place here. The second
reason points out the second great problem of the Spessart: its image. In the
19th, and for a good part of the 20th century as well,
the Spessart was a poor region, like most upland regions in Europe. The image
of poverty initiates an image of lacking history, or at least any history of
interest.
The lack of information and the small number of archaeologists interested
in the Spessart forced the working group to look for colleagues in neighbouring
disciplines, who might contribute to the few existing shreds of information.
In fact, it turned out that geographers, geologists and biologists had been
much more interested in the Spessart then archaeologists and that they had found
a lot of evidence for a much more vivid and interesting past of this region
than was generally assumed. Often they had difficulties to interpret their data,
as the common archaeological literature described the region as dull and of
little interest. So the discussion between archaeologists, historians and natural
scientists came as a revelation to all, and the picture of the Spessart changed
dramatically for those, who participated in this dialogue. When in autumn 1995,
after a great congress on the Spessart, the working group for archaeology decided
to formulate a follow-up project, the newly founded Archaeological Spessart
Project (ASP) was multidisciplinary in its whole conception. However, dominated
by archaeologists, the goals formulated were quite traditional, like combining
existing data in a common (computerised) system and initiating some research
to compensate missing links that came from different interests in the Bavarian
and Hessian part of the Spessart in the last century. Nevertheless, there was
also consensus that to gain a better understanding the perspective should be
on the landscape as a whole, and not just certain groups of monuments and that
the public must be integrated in the discussion. The group of volunteers managed
by the district archaeologists of Gelnhausen set the example by playing an important
role in all questions of future research.
Spessart goes Europe
All these intentions were merely academic at the time, since no project could
be undertaken without money, and money proved difficult to raise. This only
changed when the ASP came into contact with a small group of mostly Scandinavian
organisations, which were just starting a co-operation on cultural landscapes.
The contact was established at the final congress of the Council of Europe´s
Bronze Age Campaign in Berlin in 1997. Finally the City Museums of Odense (Denmark),
Rogaland County Council (Norway), the National Board of Antiquities (Estonia),
the ASP (Germany) and Föreningen Bronstid (Sweden) came together to form
European Cultural Paths (ECP), a project on the Bronze Age landscape, managed
by the Swedish partner. ECP successfully applied for a two years funding by
the RAPHAEL programme of the European Commission, Directorate X, for 1998-1999.
The EU money made all the difference for the ASP; it worked as a door opener
to local and regional administrations and to local and regional business. But
the European co-operation also changed the structure and intentions of ASP.
New ways of thinking and different perspectives influenced ASP: the approach
to the cultural landscape became more holistic, archaeology less dominant, public
awareness more important and a primary focus was laid on aspects of landscape
management.
The co-operation within ECP has been extremely successful. The ASP had started
a number of co-operations with universities and research institutes beforehand,
namely the Universities of Würzburg and Frankfurt, the Technical University
of Berlin and, most important, the Research Institute Senckenberg. In 1998 a
project was started together with the University Frankfurt by Dr. Thorsten Westphal
to produce a standard dendro-chronology of the Spessart. In the meantime literally/virtually
thousands of samples have been measured. Oak and beach can be traced back well
into prehistoric periods. The immigration of spruce and pine in more recent
times was also investigated. The dendro-chronological profiles are not only
important for dating wood, but also provide a unique data basis for climatic
research. In 1999 a scientist was employed full-time by the ASP for the first
time; Dr. Gerrit Himmelsbach is still responsible for all the public work of
the ASP and is in charge of the cultural paths. In the beginning only a few
cultural paths were planned, but these quickly developed into a planned network
covering most of the Spessart area. Every path has its own theme, devoted to
transport and trade in the early modern period: Bavarian kings´ hunting parties
, agriculture and foresting, mining, glass production, Iron Age hill forts,
medieval castle sites and so on. They all consider and present both local characteristics
and the whole picture of the cultural landscape.
When the EU funding ended in 1999 the partners decided to continue networking
and to launch a set of follow-up projects at the final meeting in Odense. One
of these is the Northern Bronze Age Road, co-ordinated by the Norwegian partner;
Pathways to Cultural Landscapes (PCL), a project on the study, communication
and management of marginal landscapes, headed by the ASP is another. After Odense
a preliminary meeting was organised in Aschaffenburg (Germany) in December 1999
and another meeting in Kilkenny (Ireland) at the beginning of 2000. As a result
12 sample landscapes from 10 European countries were congregated together to
create the basis for PCL. The PCL partners come from the Czech Republic (Práchensko),
Denmark (Funen), England (Bowland Forest / Lune Valley), Estonia (Kaali), Finland
(Untamala), Germany (Albersorf and Spessart), Ireland (Dowris), Italy (Paneveggio
/ Vanoi), Sweden (Bjäre and Halland) and Wales (Arfon). The organisations
participating range from charities and non-profit institutes, over local and
regional museums, district administrations, state heritage management authorities
to universities, research institutes and an academy of science. Thus, they represent
a variety of organisations dealing with the cultural landscapes as manifold
as the sample landscapes themselves. In PCL the diversity of cultural landscapes
in Europe is well-presented, ranging from coastal regions to high alpine areas,
including wetlands, dry lands, marches, bogs, heather, pasture, arable land
and woodland.
The Spessart GIS and Pathways to Cultural Landscapes
In 2000, the staff team working for the ASP was expanded with the employment
of the physical geographer Jürgen Jung, who works in the Research Station
for Central European Highlands of the Research Institute Senckenberg, in the
middle of the Spessart. He is developing a Spessart-GIS. This is a very powerful
tool for collecting information about archaeological sites and monuments, geology,
biology, agriculture and foresting, historic documents and maps etc within the
region. The GIS allows combining this highly structured database in an unlimited
number of ways, producing highly informative maps, allowing the modelling of
the cultural landscape in time and even 3D animations. But most important, it
brings together the data of the whole Spessart region unanimously. In its complexity
and the size of its sample area it is quite unique in Germany.
At the end of the year 2000, the Directorate General granted 3 years of funding
to the ASP as part of the PCL project within the European Culture 2000 Programme
of the EU Commission. After some initial turmoil and reassigning the leading
partnership from the city of Aschaffenburg to the commune of Albersdorf, the
project proceeded extremely well, with the ASP accomplishing its organisational
tasks in an exemplary manner. A project co-ordinator was employed; Mr. Harald
Rosmanitz M.A. set up his co-ordination office in the city of Lohr in the Spessart.
Since then a multilingual internet platform has been constructed, two general
meetings were held in England and Italy, a number of staff exchanges took place
between partner organisations, an exhibition on the sample landscapes has been
initiated and exchange and co-operation between the partners has flourished.
After the first project year all partners could present very positive results
on the local level, with a lot of fascinating research, GIS work and popular
publications.
The ASP profited greatly when in 2001, Sabine Hoffmann M.A. was employed to
develop a local museum in Frammersbach, mainly dedicated to the famous teamsters
of Frammersbach, who transported goods from Nuremberg to Antwerp in early modern
times. The fate of this group also gives a good example of the problems the
region experienced in the 19th century. When new technologies arose,
the teamsters of Frammersbach and their horse driven carts were left unemployed;
the badly paid home textile production served as a weak economic surrogate.
It was in these times, that the Spessart attained and was doomed by its image
of poverty.
All things considered, it was once again the co--operation within a European
network that proved most important for the success of the project: tools and
strategies of landscape study, GIS mapping and Historic Landscape Characterisation
(HLC) were vividly and controversially discussed ; different intentions and
traditions lead to very different perspectives. Nevertheless a number of common
points and goals emerged as well. The discussion also sharpened the view on
our own approaches and altered them in many ways.
HLC and the European discussion
GIS and HLC are the heart and core of contemporary landscape study and have
therefore also been the main focus of PCL in its first year. The necessity for
a European forum to discuss the aims, goals, methodology and philosophy of HLC
and the study of cultural landscapes in general was the key factor behind the
new European project on cultural landscapes and an important argument for its
implementation, an argument well approved by the EU and the international committee
of experts evaluating the applications.
Like many other areas of the human sciences, the research of cultural landscapes
is also facing new challenges. The archaeology of cultural landscapes is still
a young discipline, working with new methods and sources. So the experiences
with these methods and tools are still very different. The goal of this project
is to find common solutions and to foster a better understanding of different
approaches. Primarily we want to define our ideas. We have to ensure, that we
use a common language and speak of the same things. This will also help to disseminate
interesting results from these studies to a wide public. (Adapted excerpt from
the PCL Application)
Cultural landscapes like the Spessart reflect the cultural diversity of Europe
and are an important element of Europe´s natural and cultural heritage. Like
all landscapes selected for this project the Spessart suffers an image of poverty;
this region is often not perceived as a cultural landscape at all. The European
project will improve the image of these landscapes and raise the interest of
the local population. The project will also be an important contribution to
a more European approach of the cultural landscapes in science. It will advertise
the cultural heritage of the selected regions simultaneously, while the European
co-operation should raise the interest in cultural landscapes in general.
When setting up the application one aim was to involve partners from as many
different regions with distinct scientific and cultural backgrounds as possible,
but also to involve different organisations, which deal with the cultural landscape
at different levels. This proved especially important during the project. Seen
from a German perspective for example, the Anglo-Irish area seems to be quite
monolithic in its scientific tradition and very different e.g. from German approaches,
especially concerning archaeological aspect. On the other hand the German background
seems to be quite closely linked to the Scandinavian region, whereas discussions
between the English and Welsh partners revealed very distinct and different
approaches to HLC and its underlying philosophy. Also within the Scandinavian
partners quite different approaches became visible. HLC and the way it is carried
out very much depend on the goals formulated, and it is extremely dependent
on the scale, at which it is studied. Scale is more than a mere quantity, it
is a factor of quality.
If HLC is to be carried out at a large scale, covering complete countries(?)
at once and done with the aim of characterising a complete country, like England,
it has to be restricted to a very basic approach. Such a “desktop”
based method, employs existing maps and archival material with only little or
no fieldwork done within the region. On the other hand a characterisation of
a very small area can be based on a variety of sources, including field work
and field surveys carried out especially for this project. The difference in
methodology makes it difficult to compare results. Therefore the project in
Lancashire, a county where HLC was finished quite recently, is dedicated to
a small part of the county, where the characterisation at the smaller scales,
which is done in much greater detail shall be compared to the characterisation
derived by the large scale project; the possibilities to link the results shall
be explored.
But not only scale makes a major difference. The aim of HLC obviously influences
both methods and results. If the primary aim is to produce a tool for future
planning decisions, the interest will focus on the present state of the landscape
and its character. If the project is driven by a more scientific interest, like
modelling the change of a specific landscape through time and understanding
the human impact on landscape change or even climatic change, the historical
shaping process of the landscape will be much more important. The type of organisation
doing the research also has a great influence. “Bottom-up” approaches,
like that used within ASP, which have to work with volunteers and raise interest
of local politics and economy to find funding, are forced to do their work in
close relation to the local population. They must to involve local people in
their work and have to interest them in this work. Therefore, they are more
likely to appreciate the special perspective of local people to their own landscape
and how they characterise their landscape, than may be the case in “top-down”
projects, which are undertaken by big research institutes.
Neither of these approaches must be exclusive or used only alone. In fact
there are many common features to any study of cultural landscapes and HLC,
which cannot be neglected: they always have to start with the actual, recent,
modern landscape, even when one is mainly interested in the history of the landscape;
even when studying a specific period of the past only, to get “down”
to these vanished landscapes one has to start with the present landscape. So
an HLC only interested in the character of the present landscape, which is dedicated
to future change and future planning decisions, will nevertheless be a perfect
starting platform for any research dedicated to past landscape development.
A study of a whole landscape must lead to the characterisation of the area under
study and should not be reduced to simply mapping dots and lines, as described
earlier. The classical find spots, sites and archaeological / historical features
like roads, boundaries, field walls or hedges are nevertheless a valuable source
for characterising the landscape and exploring its history. Of course, they
are often very subjective sources, as their density, quality or even the time
from which they originate is highly dependent on the interests and working capacity
of past and present researchers. Field surveys are labour intensive, time consuming
and expensive, and are thus, generally only possible in small, well chosen areas.
Different types of sources of varying quality present one of the greatest
obstacles for achieving comparable results. Modern technique can help to overcome
this problem. The most important tool for HLC, for gathering and processing
data, is the computer based GIS. Although GIS is a very powerful tool to produce
maps, it is primarily a database system with which, a highly structured database
can be processed in a multitude of ways. If one follows some basic rules of
scientific work, like clearly stating the sources for specific information,
it is easy to produce single source maps, regardless of how diverse the sources
of the data filed may be. Comparability is thereby easily achieved.
Understanding the potential of GIS and a broad minded perspective of HLC,
its philosophy and purpose, can serve a basis for interaction between partners
individually following very different approaches. What has been achieved in
PCL so far, and hopefully will continue and grow during the rest of the project
time, can be a model for future interaction and co-operation. While individual
approaches are respected and pursued, they do not stand isolated but within
a network of exchange and communication. A good example for this was the first
staff exchange within PCL between the Swedish partner in Bjäre and the
English partner in Lancashire. The aim was to help the Swedish partner to overcome
some problems in setting up their own GIS system and HLC strategy. The exchange
proved to be extremely successful and the Swedish solution was not simply a
copy of the English approach. Instead, the experiences gained in Lancashire
helped in formulating a solution, tailored to the needs and aims of the Swedish
project.
From HLC to sustainable management
Although the ASP started with the main goal of understanding and describing
the history of the cultural landscape of the Spessart area, it also became involved
in questions of planning, developing and managing the landscape. First ideas
on fostering cultural tourism developed along with strategies to involve as
many local people as possible in the study and communication of the cultural
landscape, raising interest by presenting economic potential. Providing solutions
for sustainable management became more important during the progress of the
project, although the only way to communicate them is still by talking to decision
makers and convincing them at local forums and seminars. Another reason for
this increased involvement in management questions was the success of the cultural
paths, originally laid out to give local people access to the archive of their
landscape, to make the hidden features of past human activities more visible
and perceptible.
The cultural paths created by the ASP are built in close co-operation with
local historical societies, the Spessartbund (a regional walking/hiking society
with a great number of members), the state heritage management and environment
management, local governments, forest directories and many other organisations.
The paths are dedicated to special themes typical for the chosen region: e.g.
traffic and transport in Frammersbach, hunting parties of the royal Bavarian
court in Bischbrunn or mining in Biebergemünd. To date, seven cultural
paths are finished and open to the public, another 30 are planned for the next
years. Presently 12 paths are under construction. For each path a concept of
maintaining and communicating the path has been created with local organisations.
A training programme for guides is developed together with relevant institutions
like regional economic societies, tourist organisations and secondary schools.
To raise awareness of the cultural landscapes special actions are undertaken,
like the „Kunst-Rasen“ (Art-Lawn), a project where artists produced
works of art in local factories using the materials processed in those enterprises.
The works of art reflected the cultural landscape and were shown at the royal
hunting lodge Rohrbrunn, the park of Bad Orb, the castle gardens of Aschaffenburg
and during the „Regional Days“ in Gelnhausen. Some of the objects
are on display at hotels in the region with considerable success.
It may be a typical German aspect, but the great variety of actions organised
by the ASP raised suspicion among many colleagues. The question arose, whether
or not it is still an “archaeological” project, if there is any
archaeology in the project at all? Although some excavations and traditional
field surveys did take place, they are not a dominant feature in this colourful
project. The holistic approach gives no preference to any single discipline.
To quote one of the famous fathers of German archaeology, Rudolf Virchow, “archaeology
is about the history of man through his artefacts and traces of his actions,
therefore it includes all human sciences, history, philosophy, anthropology,
medicine and all natural sciences alike.” In this sense, the ASP is essentially
an archaeological project. Still some traditional funding programmes refused
to accept it, on the basis that it includes too many aspects, which are not
archaeological or scientific at all.
The strict division between cultural heritage management and environmental
/ ecological heritage management and the distinction between archaeological
heritage and built heritage seems to be a German speciality. Although from a
German perspective the co-operation between these departments in Lancashire
for example looks quite exceptional, similar situations are well known to many
of our partners. Cultural landscapes have been studied by architects, landscape
architects and others, sometimes from a purely ecological perspective and without
realising that it was a study on cultural landscapes. Bringing together all
these players in the field of cultural landscapes is a great task, offering
archaeologists who accept this chore a chance to go back to the roots of archaeology:
understanding the human being and his interaction with his environment with
all available tools. Man has used all means at his disposal to form his environment
to his own needs - not always successfully of course, and often with unwanted
side effects.
Some of these side effects, like climatic change, make the study of cultural
landscapes and their history so interesting and maybe even vital well beyond
the borders of archaeology. Some partners in PCL for example have been asked,
if it would be possible, to calculate models of future developments from the
models of past landscape change. It might be overestimating archaeological evidence,
but it brings archaeology into the middle of one of the most important public
discussions of our time.
Conclusion
HLC can be seen as just another method of managing the cultural heritage or
studying its past. However, it also incorporates some totally new aspects, which
change our perspective of archaeology. It deals with whole landscapes in a holistic
way, it is multidisciplinary by definition and it describes the landscape by
the way it was used and shaped by humans. Most of all, it is always and primarily
concerned with the actually present landscape, the landscape existing now and
today. As opposed to many excavation based studies it is impossible to strip
the top layers and directly go down to the “interesting” historic
features in HLC. A landscape can only be understood by characterising its present
state and then exploring its past, step by step. Fixing and mapping dots and
lines, archaeological finds and sites must not remain the sole focus when studying
landscapes. All the space in between these sites is important as well, being
of course, the space in which man has lived and interacted with his environment.
Although HLC can be used in very different ways, regional scientific and cultural
traditions strongly influence the work of scientists; the basic common features
are so strong and established, that they overcome traditional borders and limitations.
So HLC and the study of Cultural Landscapes in general can bring archaeology
into the 21st century and make it a central human science for the
future. Thus great potential still lies within us, to be exploited a long way
ahead of us.
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