page_title: History of the forest in Central Europe
section_title: Saltworks
hierarchical_section_title: History of the forest in Central Europe / Middle Ages / Forest use in the Middle Ages / Saltworks
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Osterheide bei Schneverdingen
context_page_description: The history of the forest in Central Europe is characterised by thousands of years of exploitation by people. Thus a distinction needs to be made between the botanical natural history of the forest in pre- and proto-historical times—which falls mainly into the fields of natural history and Paleobotany—and the onset of the period of sedentary settlement which began at the latest in the Neolithic era in Central Europe - and thus the use of the forest by people, which is covered by the disciplines of history, archaeology cultural studies and ecology.
  The term Central Europe is generally used both geographically and ecologically to describe the area that lies roughly between the North Sea, the Alps, the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea.
context_section_description: In the Late Middle Ages the majority of salt deposits were transferred into the ownership of the territorial princes. That started an unrestrained extraction of this important economic commodity. Large quantities of wood were needed for the process of salt mining, both for the construction of galleries as well as for the boiling pans (Sudpfannen) of the saltworks or salines. These took the largest proportion of wood.
  How disastrous the extraction of salt was for some landscapes is illustrated by the example of the town of Lüneburg in North Germany. Before salt was discovered it was surrounded by dense forests, but during the course of salt mining all the woods were cleared. Only a heath landscape remained, a countryside that was further devastated by plaggen agriculture. During the 20th century much of the area to the southwest of Lüneburg became a British military training area, causing further destruction.
caption: Lüneburg Heath is the site of former salt extraction and was previously a forested area.
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