Landscape sustainability and early field systems in western Estonia: A case study on the hill of Salumägi at Salevere

The thesis assesses levels of sustainability in later prehistoric agricultural landscapes by studying changes in the characteristics of field systems at regional and local scales. The research tackles questions of how agricultural landscapes were organised into field systems, how environmental and social factors affected the character and organisation of field systems, and how the management of field systems changed through time. The project has one primary research question: How did the locations and organisation of field systems impact on landscape sustainability during later prehistory? The research is organised into regional and local case studies. The regional study examines the distribution of field systems in western Estonia, and reconstructs the environmental and social factors behind the differences in field system location and form. A local case study on the hill of Salumägi at Salevere village investigates specific factors that influenced landscape sustainability in a single location. The focus on sustainability sets the research apart from earlier studies of field systems in Estonia. The research presents field systems as multifunctional entities that organised landscapes according to interdependent social and environmental processes. It argues that the more functions the field systems had, both in agricultural and social terms, and the more varied and flexible the land use practices were, the more capacity existed for resilience and landscape sustainability