Austria’s prehistoric lake-village sites have been known for over 150 years. Research in the 19th and 20th century identified a number of prehistoric lacustrine structures, with rich cultural deposits. But research into Austria’s Pfahlbau phenomenon has been characterized by discontinuity and modern transdisciplinary research has been limited both in practice and at a theoretical level. This has begun to change with several new research initiatives focussed on the area of these UNESCO World Heritage sites in the Salzkammergut (Upper Austria). One of the important challenges for current research in this region is that the concept of landscape has been mostly absent from the discussion and that the lakeshore sites were perceived until very recently as discrete points on the map. Placing these sites in their environment, tracing spatial networks and reconstructing land use dynamics therefore represent crucial tasks in Austrian wetland research.
The proposed talk will attempt to (i) characterize existing notions about human-environment relations in general and spatial dynamics in particular for the 4th millennium BC in the Attersee-Mondsee region, (ii) discuss the predominant models of land use in wetland research with special focus on circum-Alpine wetlands, (iii) put the Attersee-Mondsee region in context, and (iv) discuss the research strategy of the Beyond Lake Villages project in this context.