The Unseen Meadows

A test of combining retrogressive analysis of historic maps of the Sigtuna area villages Billby, Bärmö, Eneby, Til and Venngarn from the seventeenth century with archaeobotanical results pertaining to the tenth, eleventh and twelfth century. The study examines meadow distribution and character while aiming to determine to what extent retrogressive and archaeobotanical methods can compliment each other. Through the combination of methods, landscape change is discussed. I explore how these meadows changed from the eleventh century to the seventeenth, which meadows could reasonably be presumed to have originated in prehistoric or early historic times and whether the hypothetical habitats produced by a previous archaeobotanical study of Sigtuna macrofossils could be tied to the meadows. The study shows that the grassland was generally wetter in the eleventh century, and that thirteen out of twenty meadows may have originated already in prehistoric time and been more or less continually mowed until at least late seventeenth century. Wet meadows, calcareous wet meadows, water meadows and potentially calcareous fens could be detected in the investigated area. The study shows that the multi-disciplinary approach as well as source pluralism indeed results in a beneficial analysis synergy and that the meadows in question are possible points of origin for the macrofossils from some of Sigtuna’s oldest strata