Transformations of Landscapes: the impacts and aftermaths of the Thirty Years´ War

Attention: The date of conference has changed. New date is 10th – 13th November 2017.

This conference will investigate the transformations that took place in the landscapes and settlements of central and northern Europe during the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648). The war was accompanied by political, economic and social upheavals whose effects influenced the lives of ordinary people for generations. Recent research in Bohemia has established that the devastation of settlements was conditioned by a number of factors. The most noticeable correlation between destruction/desertion seems to relate to proximity to major communication routes, where armies passed by and scoured neighbouring areas for food and supplies leaving corridors of death and destruction, and encouraging famine and plagues. Our approach to the Thirty Years’ War has integrated several strands of evidence and has been realized through a close co-operation between archaeologists, historians, cartographers, environmental specialists and other experts. We maintain that a deeper understanding of the impacts of the war can only be achieved by adopting such a broad and rigorous interdisciplinary approach, at a European level, and invite papers that explore evidence for disruptions to rural settlement and towns, changes to demography, changes to urban topography and architecture, and evidence for archaeological, iconographic, and early broadsheet representations of battlefields, sieges, military camps, and campaigns.

About the conference

The Department of Archaeology Faculty of Philosophy and Arts, University of West Bohemia in cooperation with the West Bohemian Museum and University of Amsterdam´s School of Heritage, Memory, and Material Culture, invite you to Pilsen for the conference

Sessions:
1) Achaeology
2) History of Arts
3) History
4) Others

Transformations of Landscapes: the impacts and aftermaths of the Thirty Years´ War

Conference venue:

The conference will be held in the West Bohemian Museum, Kopeckého sady 2, Pilsen, Czech Republic on the 10th November – 13th November 2017

Conference languages:

Conference papers can be presented in English and German.

A Land Transformed: An Interdisciplinary Investigation into the Impact of the Thirty Years' War on the Rural Landscape of BohemiaResearch is carried out with the financial support of the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic (project no. 15-03380S)