B 02

For people practising agriculture, soils are the starting point for their social, economic and cultural life and can therefore have an impact on the perception and use of spaces and landscapes.

While in the first phase of funding the large-scale arrangement of the relation of favour and disfavour was considered as a trigger of movements, in the second phase a spatial limitation to selected settlement pockets of the Middle Bronze Age took place. The working areas of the first phase – Baar (favourable area), eastern central Black Forest and western Swabian Alb (unfavourable area) – were supplemented by additional sites in western Allgäu (unfavourable area) and Hegau (favourable area).

The reasons and parameters for spatial development, starting from so-called favourable areas into unfavourable areas, were investigated in the previous phases. Now the focus is on the transition of the perception as favourable to unfavourable within an area as a further part of settlement and land use dynamics. Due to the interconnectedness of the ResourceComplex ‘soil’ with resources of agricultural production and the organisation of agriculture, the social order and the cosmology of society, archaeological, archaeopedological and ethnopedological methods are used.

In detail, the Early Latène settlement of Hochdorf an der Enz (Gde. Eberdingen) will first be examined for land use practices. For the transition from the Early to the Middle Latène Period, a relatively short and intensive climate change as well as a population decline and social changes are attested within the study region. Are these developments reflected in land use practices as well? Are land use practices one of the causes of migration and social change?

Various pedological methods are used to investigate land use practices in order to answer the question of whether Iron Age land use led to soil erosion and thus reduced the yield capacity of the very fertile soil in the region. Of particular importance are colluvial deposits, which are available as archives for sedimentation, climate and land use. It is still unclear at what times the colluvia in the vicinity of the Hochdorf settlement were formed. Did the agricultural potential of the Hochdorf settlement decline as a whole? Did local restructuring of land use occur between eroded and colluvial areas? Land use dynamics are analysed using a multi-proxy approach including OSL and AMS14C dating and anthracological determinations of tree species, as well as biomarker analyses such as urease activity of soil organisms, steroid analysis, phosphor analysis, analysis of low molecular weight aromatic carbon compounds. To assess site properties, pH, carbonate content and grain size distribution are analysed. As a settlement indicator and to assess further anthropogenic influence on the soil, the total phosphate content is determined and heavy metal analyses are carried out. To determine the geogenic background, total and trace elements are determined. This then allows to estimate the anthropogenic share of an element via the difference to the original substrate.

On a further level, the question of what socio-cultural role soil played in late Hallstatt/early Latène society will be clarified. What soil knowledge of prehistoric societies is still recognisable today? In order to understand the perception and handling of soil as a resource as well as soil erosion, a comparison with traditional societies will be made. Subsequently, a model of Late Hallstatt and Early Latène soil knowledge will be created to show the links between soil as a resource and economy, cosmology and social order. In addition, ethnographic studies dedicated to traditionally agrarian societies in situations of change will be systematically evaluated. This will address the question of how societies react in the face of climatic or weather-related events and which conditions fundamentally lead to changes or adaptations in economic practices and, above all, in land use.

Synthetically, a model of a ResourceCulture, a society in transition, is to be created on the basis of new results from the closer settlement environment of Hochdorf (Enz), the results of the first and second phases of funding and the evaluation of ethnographic studies. The focus is on the interactions between the culturally shaped resource of soil in Early Latène society and natural factors.