Century Eastern Economy Nineteenth Regional State United
From the 12th century up to the 16th century the Eastern Baltic region was Northern Europe’s cultural frontier. Conquest and colonisation by Catholic crusaders from Western Europe, the most important of which was the Teutonic Order, forced the foundations of a Christian, urban society upon one previously composed of diverse pagan tribes. The profound legacy left by the Crusaders, socially, politically and environmentally, forms the subject of a new multi-disciplinary research programme led by archaeologists from Britain’s Reading University:The Ecology of Crusading.
In a 1st February presentation at the Estonian Embassy in London, the project’s principal investigator and lecturer in archaeology at Reading University, Aleks Pluskowski, observed that the former tribal lands were reorganised into territories held by bishops and the Teutonic Order. However, there are few surface traces of the colonisation process outside of the main features, the Crusader castles. What was the impact of the construction of castles, their associated vast settlements and towns on the ecology this region? How did the introduction of Christianity, monasteries and parishes change the pagan spiritual society? Did the incomers adapt to the existing society?
Climate Deterioration
The study will combine the talents of archaeologists, zooarchaeologists, paleobotanists, geophysicists and historians from Britain, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuanian and Hungary. They will examine plant microfossils, vertebrate bones, timber, charcoal and the geochemistry of buried soils, as well as assessing the written historical documents. The overall aim is to build up an interpretative framework which could be applied to the study of cultural and environmental impacts of colonisation in other regions.
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