CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES – RESEARCH IN BIAŁOWIEŻA PRIMEVAL FOREST
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 2020-10-17

The Białowieża Forest is one of the largest forested areas in Poland, it occupies nearly 1 500 km2 of which 42% is in Poland and the rest is located in Belarus. Significant part of this area is covered by various types of protected zones including strict reserve in the the Bialowieża National Park. Survey in the Białowieża Forest was always very difficult because dense vegetation and lack of agricultural activities what makes aerial archaeology useless. However, this situation creates great preservation conditions for older settlement remnants. They are now accessible by the new technology development - e.g. airborne laser scanning (ALS) or high accuracy GPS. Project “Cultural and natural heritage of the Białowieża Forest” launched at in January 2017 aims at comprehensive, interdisciplinary examination of the archaeological resources of the forest with the help of nature sciences. The goal is to map traces of anthropogenic and natural sites of its own form using ALS, their field verification combined with geophysical surveys and test excavations. All data obtained will be collated in a GIS data base. Already the first season of research provided extremely interesting examples of well-preserved cultural landscapes. Particularly noteworthy are examples of old arable fields of undefined chronology. The most interesting, however, are complexes that include settlement, arable fields and accompanying sepulchral features, usually in the form of barrows. A very large number of features from the Stone Age to the Modern Times (e.g. traces of forest resources exploitation like: charcoal piles, wood-distillings, military constructions, etc.), create a unique landscape of primeval forest, periodically occupied by human communities. We will discuss the results of our ALS analysis, field-walk surveys, and second season of excavations. Apart from the results of the prospecting and excavations, it will be discussed also the issue of research within strictly protected areas.

Author(s): Jakubczak, Michal (Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology Polish Academy of Sciences; Institute of Archaeology Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw) - Wawrzeniuk, Joanna - Budziszewski, Janusz (Institute of Archaeology Cardinal Stefan
Wyszyński University in Warsaw) - Krasnodębski, Dariusz (Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology Polish Academy of Sciences) - Niedziółka, Kamil - Rutyna, Magdalena - Szubski, Michał - Szlązak, Roman (Institute of Archaeology Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw) - Urbańczyk, Przemysław (Institute of Archaeology Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw; Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology Polish Academy of Sciences)