Project Details
Projekt
The irrigated meadows of the Wiesent River catchment (Northern Franconian Alb) in its historical depth. A blueprint for agrarian-dominated floodplain systems?
Subject Area
Physical Geography
Early Modern History
Human Geography
Medieval History
Early Modern History
Human Geography
Medieval History
Term
since 2023
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 509913780
The irrigated meadows of the Wiesent River catchment (Northern Franconian Alb) in its historical depth. A blueprint for agrarian-dominated floodplain systems? Results of the project Evolution of a human-dominated floodplain system: The Wiesent River System in the Northern Franconian Alb (Main catchment) in Early Middle Ages to Early Modern Times from the first funding period have shown that the sedimentation dynamics known from earlier studies from the river Aufseß can also be found in the wider catchment of the river Wiesent. In the Middle Ages, there was a drastic change in the sediment regime with up to 3 m thick floodloam deposition. These sediments of the Wiesent River catchment show an astonishing homogeneity. We hypothesise that there is a link between homogeneous floodloam evolution and the irrigated water meadows, which are widely recognisable in the landscape relics. This provides a starting point for tracing the phenomenon of water meadows back to the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. Despite written evidence from the Middle Ages, current research sees meadow watering as a land use of the 16th to 19th centuries. The aim is to use the example of the river Wiesent and its tributaries, which we learnt to understand in the first funding period as an agrarian landscape with the floodplain embedded in the cultural landscape, to characterize pre-modern meadow irrigation more precisely and to understand its significance for agricultural systems. Our precise knowledge of the landscape and its sources, as well as the database from the first funding period, allow us for the first time to gain a historical dimension for the water meadows in the study area, which has now been expanded to include the lower Wiesent River catchment and the UNESCO Intangible Heritage water meadows there. The project thus contributes to the overall topic of the priority programme by focusing on agricultural use as the main factor of anthropogenic influence on river landscapes. The focus on the interaction of the floodplain with the adjacent agricultural areas as well as the interdisciplinary investigation of water management involving geoarchaeology, historical geography and archaeology is innovative and fills a gap. The project can therefore be categorised as an in-depth analysis. From a comparative perspective, the different situations in the upper and lower catchment of the Wiesent River and in the neighbouring landscapes are contrasted. In relation to the priority programme, the project contributes to a comparative modelling of the development of an anthropogenic floodplain landscape.
DFG Programme
Priority Programmes
Subproject of
SPP 2361:
On the Way to the Fluvial Anthroposphere
