Human and Environment Interactions in the Environs of Prehistorical Iron Smelting Places in Silesia, Poland.

This doctoral thesis deals with the human-environment interactions of early iron smelting during the pre-Roman Iron Age and the early Roman period in the Widawa catchment area in Lower Silesia, Poland. The investigations focus on three approaches in the context of human and environment interactions in regard to early iron smelting: (i) a resource approach investigating the general resource situation, the favorability for bog iron ores and the geochemical and mineralogical composition of local ores and prehistoric slags; (ii) a landscape approach dealing with a holistic reconstruction of the landscape genesis and the human impacts on the landscape development and (iii) an environmental approach focusing on small-scale geochemical impacts of human activities at furnace locations of the prehistoric smelting site of Pielgrzymowice.

This dissertation project was successfully completed within the research group A-5 Iron as a raw material of the Excellence Cluster 264 Topoi.

[see also: https://www.topoi.org/project/a-5-2-1/ ]