Geoplaza

Some historical maps for the mapping the Via Appia project.

This will be updated in a later stage.

mappingtheviaappia.nl/4dgis

This webpage shows the preliminary outcomes of HERCULES WP 2, case study landscape Uppland, Sweden. More information about HERCULES can be foudn here:  www.hercules-landscapes.eu

CASE STUDY AREA UPPLAND

Daniel Löwenborg and Kim von Hackwitz (Uppsala University http://www.uu.se/)

The historic development of the landscape in Uppland is highly influenced by the marked regressive shoreline displacement after the Holocene. Today the land is rising by about 5 millimetres per year, but since this process is slowing down it has historically been faster, and has altered the character of the landscape considerably. This creates a horizontal stratigraphy in the landscape where prehistoric sites that was once water bound are now found further inland the older they are. The changing landscape also meant that the characteristics of the landscape changed, and new land with different geological characteristics became available for occupation. Since subsistence strategies changes over time, with different land use and landscape preferences, this means that long term settlement patterns become complex and an understanding of the changing shorelines are fundamental for understanding long term landscape use. Archaeological remains from different periods and of different character are distributed over the landscape in a reflection of these landscape changes. For these reasons, the Uppland case initially focuses on modelling the shoreline dynamics in relation to isostatic land rise. 

This website provides a viewing interface for the data collected for the Case study landscape of the Dutch river delta in the context of the EU funded HERCULES research programme (http://www.hercules-landscapes.eu/). The overarching goal of this transdisciplinary research project is to increase understanding of drivers, patterns, and values of European cultural landscapes and to use this knowledge to develop, test, and demonstrate strategies for their protection, management, and planning.

The project builds on the development and application of innovative technologies and tools for assessing cultural landscapes. The strong involvement of small and medium-sized enterprises and non-governmental organisations provides a prototype for the empowerment of these institutions in landscape planning and management. The project cooperates closely with public and private authorities, agencies, and associations of citizens at local, national, and EU levels. Five objectives address the key topics of the call and form the structure of the project.

Objective 1: To synthesise existing knowledge on drivers, patterns, and outcomes of persistence and change in Europe’s cultural landscapes

Objective 2: To perform targeted case studies to develop in-depth insights on dynamics and values of cultural landscapes

Objective 3: To develop a typology of cultural landscapes and scale-up case study insights using observations and landscape modelling

Objective 4: To develop visions for re-coupling social and ecological components in cultural landscapes and translate them into policy and management options

Objective 5: To design and implement a community-based Knowledge Hub for Good Landscape Practice and test it with land users, agencies, small and medium-sized enterprises, and citizen associations

The data  presented in this webviewer are part of the Spatial Data Infrastructure developed for HERCULES´s Work Package 2. The principal aim of WP 2 is to enhance methodologies to collect data and to create knowledge about the long-term dimension of cultural landscape change. Its specific objectives are:

- to define an innovative methodological procedure for understanding the long-term development and transformation of cultural landscapes, drawing on recent insights from landscape archaeology, geography and (historical) ecology; 

- to develop and test an infrastructural facility (Spatial Data Infrastructure; SDI) for retrieving and linking archaeological, historical and ecological data and geo-information to support the interdisciplinary study of landscape change

- to develop and test models for analyzing long-term trends in landscape history in the case study sites

- to share research outcomes with relevant stakeholders through the knowledge hub developed 

Within HERCULES WP2 the concrete possibilities of dynamic modeling will be explored by adopting a case study approach. This will be done for three different areas, each being representative for more widespread environmental and climatic conditions within Europe: Atlantic (the Dutch river area), Boreal (the Uppland area, Sweden) and continental European conditions (Kodavere and Vooremaa, Estonia). A Mediterranean area (Puglia, Italy) will be used for comparison. All case studies, most notably the Dutch and Swedish ones, will start from the premises defined in Section 4 and follow the operational principles of Section 5. For each of the three main study regions a somewhat different modelling framework will be adopted to achieve this aim. Therefore, we will briefly introduce each of the case study landscapes below.