How Joannites' economy eradicated primeval forest and created anthroecosystems in medieval Central Europe.

ABSTRACT: During European states' development, various past societies utilized natural resources, but their impact was not uniformly spatially and temporally distributed. Considerable changes resulted in landscape fragmentation, especially during the Middle Ages. Changes in state advances that affected the local economy significantly drove trajectories of ecosystems' development. The legacy of major changes from pristine forest to farming is visible in natural archives as novel ecosystems. Here, we present a high-resolution densely dated multi-proxy study covering the last 1500 years from a peatland located in CE Europe. The economic activity of medieval societies was highly modified by new rulers-the Joannites (the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, Knights Hospitaller). We studied the record of these

SUBMITTER: Lamentowicz M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7677315 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature