Away relic

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View of a field in a slightly hilly landscape. In addition, a furrow in the terrain, recognizable through the trees and bushes on the sides, runs to the horizon.
Overgrown Deitweg in Lower Saxony
Ravine surrounded by bushes with a modern asphalt surface. In the middle of the street a long rectangular area with very old-looking light cobblestones.
Pavement of a Roman street, preserved in a street in Hungary that is still in use today

As a path relics or Altwegrelikte refers shapes and features in the landscape that to a vanished way point or to a previously more important of ways which are of minor importance today. Relics of former paths and roads are still numerous in the landscape, even if they are not always immediately recognizable at first glance. Above all in forest areas and pasture areas as well as in small-scale agricultural regions, road relics, especially hollows , are often to be found. Road relics help to clear up the routes of old paths in the context of historical and archaeological old path research. In the past, old paths, streets and drifts were decisive for the structuring of the land surface used. Their course often coincides with old country or field boundaries.

Even today, road relics in many places shape local landscape conditions through their relief and the relief-related vegetation. They often also represent valuable biotopes. As such and as witnesses to the development of the network of trails that has taken place over centuries and sometimes even thousands of years, they form valuable landscape elements of the cultural landscape . They must therefore be preserved within the framework of a listed and environmentally friendly use.

Road relics in the narrower sense

As road relics in the narrower sense count:

  • Hollow away
  • Troughs
  • Track compartments
  • Terrain steps in the course of abandoned paths
  • Wheel tracks embossed in the ground
  • Remnants of paving
  • Terrain supports
  • Soil changes that are no longer visible on the surface, which can be determined in the aerial photograph , by archaeological investigations or by soil physical measurements, e.g. due to filled-in hollows or due to solidified subsoil

Companion

Companions are features that indirectly indicate the earlier meaning of a path or paths that have disappeared, e.g. B .:

  • old trees that originally accompanied a path or at prominent points such as B. intersections, field boundaries or culmination points were planted
  • Boundary stones that originally accompanied a path that ran along a field or country border
  • Signposts
  • Stone crosses
  • Relics of lockups
  • Relics from waiting areas and other fortifications
  • Passages through Landwehr

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ D. Denecke: Altwegrelikte: Methods and problems of their inventory and interpretation. A systematic overview. In: ways as goal, publications of the antiquity commission for Westphalia XIII. Münster 2002, p. 1.
  2. ↑ E. Fischer: To assess old ravines. In: Urgeschichte und Heimatforschung 24. 1987, p. 7.
  3. ^ BW Bahn: On the question of the centrality of landscapes, places and routes. In: aedificatio terrae. Contributions to the environmental and settlement archeology of Central Europe. Festschrift for Eike Gringmuth-Dallmer on his 65th birthday, publ. VGH Jeute, J. Schneeweiß and C. Theune, Rahden / West. 2007, p. 39.
  4. ↑ D. Denecke: ways and way network. In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde. Vol. 35, Berlin / New York 2007, p. 626.