Mittelalterliche Siedlungen in Sachsen, Sachsen-Anhalt, Ostfalen und Thüringen: Zur Fächer übergreifenden Erforschung des ländlichen Raumes vornehmlich aus archäologischer Sicht

Research about medieval settlements in Central Germany has a long tradition. In the 19th and up to the middle of the 20th century it was mostly a survey of written sources and analysis of historical maps whereas local people did most of all practical work in the field. A pioneer in archaeology then was Paul Grimm with his excavations and interdisciplinary work in the deserted village Hohenrode in the Southeast Harz region and in the nearby royal court at Tilleda. Because of the geographical situation not far to the eastern border of the Frankish and German Empire to the Slavonic areas there are not only very many early fortifications with an associated group of settlements but we can also identify most interesting acculturation processes. In spite of the fact that they have been known for a long time they still wait for analysis in modern multi disciplinary research. In the areas along the border zones also rural settlements were often protected by earthworks. Because of this and the establishment of “Grundherrschaft” in the zones dominated by the Saxon and Thuringian nobility the settlement structures seem to have been more stable than in the area of the Sorbic tribes. Still there is a great lack of research particularly in regard of the structure of the settlement landscape both in the traditional Germanic regions to the west of Saale and Elbe as well as in those areas which were in regard to their daily material culture we find during archaeological investigations much dominated by Slavonic traditions despite the political rule of Saxon and Frankish nobles, the king and ecclesiastical elites. The number of deserted medieval villages and the percentage of loss of fields seem to have been very different in special regions. Looking to this phenomenon it has not to be neglected that in areas which have largely stayed in the Slavonic style of life to the 11th/12th centuries the number of houses and inhabitants and the stability of the location has been much less than in the regions with predominating Germanic traditions. But also in the latter we have to consider a concentration and severe transformation of settlement structures in the 12th and 13th centuries, so in course by the formation of a network of very big “Haufendörfer” which seems to be typical for very fertile landscapes settled quite early, but also in connection with the creation of markets and towns and the consolidation of still existing villages. The transformation processes also seem to have had a great impact on (later) deserted villages. The innovations have to be seen in the broader context of the transformation of high medieval society and the strong increase of population and a long distance mobility, which caused migration from the western parts of Central and North Western Europe to the east. At the same time there occurred a great lot of innovations in technical skills, life-style and material culture and this now formed a new cultural unit of the up to then more different regional traits. The houses and farmsteads were built much more elaborate as well as the now often rather compact villages protected with ditch(es), wall(s) and fence(s). Particularly outside the old rural core areas of Thuringia and Saxony it was not before the 12th and mostly even the late 12th and 13th century that a dense net of parishes and chapels that also means the real Christian mission did reach the average people. Special types of small and big rural villages were established particularly in the areas that were now organized in the new style of more effective western economy. Only very unfertile stretches of land (Spreewald, parts of Lusatia) with a rather high percentage of conservative Sorbs as population seem to have been more traditional and did change only later and in a lesser degree. In some areas that were colonized first in this period, like the Erzgebirge there were a lot of small as well as some big industrial activity zones but the normal type of settlement seems to have been quite big new villages. They had an own parish church from early time onwards and very regular layout of both the farmsteads and the agrarian land directly connected with this forming an impressive record of medieval settlement activities up to now. This can partly be reconstructed by historical maps but still there is an urgent need regards modern archaeological research to partly confirm or improve these hypotheses. The number of deserted villages in this region and in Saxony generally is not very high compared to Sachsen-Anhalt, Thuringia and Brandenburg. Modern interdisciplinary archaeological research regards to villages that have not been deserted in the middle ages are restricted to the areas with big scale coal-mining (“Braunkohlereviere”). From these small areas we recently have learnt a great deal about the development of single villages as well as about the settlement landscape. A more or less consequent care of governmental Heritage Management also for medieval settlements and other structures of the historical cultural landscape did mostly not develop before the 1990s and this caused quite a lot of small as well as some bigger new insights in the complex development both in time and space. The publications still rarely has been more than some precursory data and opinions. Longtime systematical research both in fieldwork and the analysis of data from excavations will be urgently needed for the future.