PAPAVER. Centre for Human and Plant Studies of Postglacial Europe and Northern Africa, 2013–2015

Papaver Centre was constituted in 2013 at the University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice, Czech Republic. The name of centre represents common and interesting genus of plants which is distributed from Northern Africa across Europe to the polar latitudes. The aim of the Papaver Centre is to develop ties within the interdisciplinary team consisting of paleoecologists, archaeologists, and vegetation ecologists in order to create an effective space for the study of climatic, cultural as well as landscape changes. This paper describes recent educational and scientific activities of the centre. One of main results is realization series of international lectures of top scientists, which substantially improved capabilities of members in the Laboratory of Archaeobotany and Palaeoecology. IANSA 2015 ● VI/1 ● 113–123 Jaromír Beneš, Adéla Pokorná, Alexandra Bernardová, Michaela Divišová, Petra Houfková, Ondřej Chvojka, Kateřina Kodýdková, Veronika Komárková, Klára Paclíková, Karel Prach, Michal Preusz, Kamila Lencová, Jan Novák, Tereza Šálková: PAPAVER. Centre for Human and Plant Studies of Postglacial Europe and Northern Africa, 2013–2015 114 the project has been to stabilize and extend the operational range of the research group, which connects archaeological directions in landscape development research with the latest trends in botany. The research centre bears the name of the genus of poppies (Papaver), the representatives of which are distributed from the coldest areas on Svalbard to the warmest of northern Africa, and thus represents the region targeted by the project’s research interests. 2. Papaver Centre and research development in 2013–2015 In accord with the project’s idea to create conditions for top science, the members of the Papaver team actively contributed to the scientific goals of their different projects. The synergy between several active research grants and the Papaver project was extraordinarily useful. The support has enabled interdisciplinary space to be created for several specific palaeoecological, archaeobotanical and botanical research tasks. The Papaver project has been led by the head of the centre, archaeologist and archaeobotanist Jaromír Beneš, and the scientific supervisor for the whole team, botanist and vegetation ecologist Karel Prach. The Papaver team itself has been organized into three thematic panels. The paleoecological group, led by J. Novák, has integrated and organized activities connected with a multi-proxy approach focused on the reconstruction of the Holocene vegetation changes in terms of vegetation, climate, and human impact upon environmental changes throughout Europe (Bešta et al. 2015). Up to now the scholars involved in the Papaver project have contributed into many multi-proxy palaeoecological and archaeobotanical studies in central Europe (Hlásek et al. 2014; Hlásek et al. 2015; Chvojka et al. 2014; Pokorná et al. 2014). The attention of the project has also been focused on the anthracological research at many important archaeological sites (Novák 2014a; Novák 2014b). Anthracology is an effective method for the study of macrovegetation in the landscape (trees and shrubs). Other anthracological studies highlight the importance of pedoanthracological research for the reconstruction of woodland history; for example, in the sandstone area of North Bohemia (Prostředník et al. 2014). The environmental archaeology group has been led by J. Beneš. This panel has focused on research into the Mesolithic/Neolithic transition in central Europe; however, the younger post Neolithic periods of human impact on nature in prehistoric Bohemia and Moravia have not been omitted. The aim of the Papaver team has also been to investigate Mesolithic hunter-gatherers through a broad interdisciplinary approach. The members have participated in a range of archaeological excavations, occuring in certain regions of the Czech Republic, namely the Třeboň basin in south Bohemia, and the north Bohemian pseudokarst area of Bohemian Paradise (Šída et al. 2014; Divišová, Šída 2015). Apart from the excavations themselves and artefact analyses, a number of palaeoecological and archaeobotanical analyses have formed integral components of the research. A variety of questions regarding former human behaviour, environment, plant use, human impact on the landscape, etc., are being investigated using the tools of environmental archaeology, such as pollen analysis or analysis of plant macroremains. In addition, the issue of the last hunter-gatherers in the region and their transition to farming, which is of special importance, has been addressed by examining specific sites together with artefactual and ecofactual material recovered from sediments dated from the Mesolithic onwards. A second connection between environmental archaeology and archaeobotany has been created in the case of the Bronze Age period and Early Iron Age period in south Bohemia. The aim of our research has been the notification of current macro-remains analysis of the prehistory cultural sediments in the region of South Bohemia. The analysed assemblage consists of a cluster of sites dated in a time span from the Late Neolithic to the Early Iron Age period. The samples have been obtained during the course of salvage, as well as scholarly, excavations between the years 2005 and 2015 (Šálková et al. 2014). In our research, macroremains analysis represents another source of interpretation of archaeological features, infills, and cultural layers, and makes possible the reconstruction of the palaeoeconomy of settlement areas (e.g. housing, economy, structure of utility plants and weeds, burial rites), as well as the natural environment in the background of human sites (e.g. Šálková et al. 2015; Hlásek et al. 2014; Chvojka et al. 2014; Hlásek et al. 2015; Fröhlich et al. 2014). The third direction of research in the environmental archaeology panel has been the study of the relationship of plants and humans in the medieval period and Early Modern Age in historical Czech lands. The archaeobotanical attractiveness of such research in these relatively young periods is that it increases a direct and unmistakable link to the present we live in now. This is especially obvious in the comparative research into the development and changes in individual types of cereals used during the malting process and subsequent brewing between the 13th and 18th centuries. As a result, we have managed to penetrate specific production processes, and the qualitative and quantitative aspects of brewing and malting before the advent of modern technology (Kočár et al. 2015). Medieval and Early Modern agriculture as a cardinal factor in the transformation of landscape and humaninduced changes in vegetation has been under the focus of Papaver Centre members. In the case of terraced fields in Malonín (South Bohemia), we have established a new methodology in how to date such changes (Houfková et al. 2015). Thanks to another research grant, we have performed archaeological excavations of the long-stripped fields in the abandoned village Malonín. Our approach has consisted of a combination of information from different sources such as historical documents and maps, chronologies based on the dating of archaeological artefacts, 14C data, and the assignment of 210Pb, 137Cs concentrations. Our results have proved that the current pattern of field margins in the former village of Malonín is High Medieval in origin. As IANSA 2015 ● VI/1 ● 113–123 Jaromír Beneš, Adéla Pokorná, Alexandra Bernardová, Michaela Divišová, Petra Houfková, Ondřej Chvojka, Kateřina Kodýdková, Veronika Komárková, Klára Paclíková, Karel Prach, Michal Preusz, Kamila Lencová, Jan Novák, Tereza Šálková: PAPAVER. Centre for Human and Plant Studies of Postglacial Europe and Northern Africa, 2013–2015 115 recent landscape patterns in many villages in marginal areas of central Europe can be based on man-made structures originating in the Medieval Period, we conclude that the memory of the medieval landscape remains very strong. Our results have provided arguments for the preservation of such defined landscape units; this could lead to a conservation of both long-term historical pattern and recent biodiversity bound to its exact combination of landscape elements. The issue of the Medieval and the Early Modern economy and ecology in historical towns has also been very attractive. Members of the Papaver Centre have studied two sites: Písek-Bakaláře (the Medieval secondarily filled-in well; Šálková et al. 2015) and České Budějovice, Krajinská street 7 (the Medieval cesspit; Čapek et al. 2015). In those times wells were very often secondarily used as cesspits: because of water contamination or changes in water regimes. Various aspects of human life and behaviour have been reflected in the waste disposal and storage inside “Well 1” in PísekBakaláře. It has been possible to detect imported material of different origins and to reconstruct the environment of the town’s background (meadows, fields, gardens, forests), as well as animal rearing (cattle, sheep, pig, horse, dog, cat), crops grown (cereals and fruits), and waste management practices (Šálková et al. 2015). The faecal infill of the cesspit in České Budějovice, Krajinská 7 was characterised by the macroremains of utility plants which reflected the food strategy of medieval burghers (Čapek et al. 2015). Since the Early Modern world was not only about production but also about consumption, a pilot study on the everyday life of selected “consumers” in the south Bohemian town of Czech Krumlov (UNESCO) has been created with an emphasis on the reconstruction of the eating habits of townspeople during the 17th century (Preusz et al. 2014), using the testimony of archival sources, archaeology, archaeobotany and archaeozoology. Our investigation has revealed that changes in the traditional stereotypical diet and social customs have crystallized over the centuries, and has opened