Lecture Series »World Archaeology Seminars«

»About Relationships: Crises, natural hazards and culinary delights in a mining landscape«

Kerstin Kowarik | OeAI

The Hallstatt-Dachstein region is one of the world’s oldest cultural and industrial landscapes. Large-scale salt mining in the Hallstatt High Valley dates back at least to the 14^th cent. BCE. For millennia, this remote alpine valley formed the economic and demographic center of a wide region. This landscape, with its diverse and rich archives, offers ideal foundations for research into the human-environment relationship.

The integrated examination of sediment archives and archaeological data paints the picture of an environmental history rich in extreme natural events as well as a careful and strategic management of the landscape by the human communities inhabiting it. (Communities, who, incidentally, also knew how to feed themselves finely and individually.) In light of the new interdisciplinary findings the question of resilience and vulnerability in the face of natural hazards and socioeconomic disruption becomes an urgent issue. As it can be demonstrated that the prehistoric mines were destroyed by natural events much more frequently than previously assumed. In addition, new research initiatives address early human activity in the high alpine zone of the karstic Dachstein plateau in direct vicinity of the Hallstatt High Valley.