The Baltic Crusades
Their Environmental and Cultural Impact
The eastern Baltic today (Aleks Pluskowski)
The paths of the eastern Baltic crusades and their targets (Aleks Pluskowski)
The Baltic "crusader states" (Aleks Pluskowski)
The Forest of Sztum in north Poland
The Teutonic Order meticulously recorded its resources, although only a small percentage of its documents has survived.
This graph shows the numbers of livestock in Nessau castle (on the Prussian-Polish borderland) recorded from 1376 through to 1431. The animal economy managed by this Teutonic Order's convent was defined by sheep, bred for wool.
The impact of the Order's military defeat in 1410 is clearly visible, with a dramatic drop in herds before the castle was abandoned. The polynomial trends show a decrease in stock over time during this politically volatile period (Marc Jarzebowski)
With Christianity came a new fasting culture, and with growing demand from the Teutonic Order's convents and burgeoning towns, a local fishing industry developed. Isotopic work indicated cod became sourced from local waters and access was initially controlled by the theocracy, before becoming more widely available to urban consumers.
Archaeological fish bones in Riga castle, Latvia (Aleks Pluskowski)
As habitats fragmented and cultivated fields expanded, levels of biodiversity decreased after the crusades, although crucially this process had already begun in previous centuries. The period of native rule from strongholds was supported by livestock rearing and hunting.
Nonetheless, in the 'Great Wilderness' the last herds of bison and aurochs in Europe could still be found.
Bison in Białowieża Forest, Poland (Magnus Elander)
The application of geoarchaeological techniques enabled the life of different communities before, during and after the crusades in Livonia and Prussia to be examined at high resolution . This shed light on the use of spaces within individual buildings and settlements, including for the storage of food and livestock fodder, the content of moats and levels of pollution, as well as how these deposits accumulated.
Taking archaeobotanical samples from the earliest archaeological layers in Elbląg castle, Poland, with a micromophological block sample visible on the left (Rowena Banerjea)
Geochemistry, in turn, was used to identify specific activities such as metalworking and animal husbandry, as well as provenance building materials. These microscopic glimpses into the daily lives of people in the medieval eastern Baltic contributed high resolution snapshots reinforcing the trends visible in our other data.
They also enabled us to characterise the areas we were excavating, such as this collapsed building in Cēsis castle in Latvia. We identified its 15th century layers as a stable from the final decades of the Teutonic Order’s rule .
Riga was founded at the start of the 13th century amidst native Liv villages that were gradually incorporated into the city. It became the principal bridgehead for crusading armies into Livonia.
Parasites were recovered from the latrines of medieval houses in the native Liv quarter in Riga. They indicated that people were living alongside their livestock and handling raw fish.
Geoarchaeological analyses confirmed that organic waste built up in the wooden streets. The style of timber architecture was also very different to the one introduced by German migrants in the rest of the city.
Excavations of the native Liv quarter in the Old Town of Riga, Latvia (Uldis Kalējs)
In contrast to the low economic status of native communities in towns, the members of the ruling theocracy led an affluent lifestyle, with access to imported exotic plants, fine beverages and meat from large game.
The castle at Gniew, Poland (Alex Brown)
Written sources provide a valuable record of how the landscape was modified to meet the new regime's requirements. The Teutonic Order sponsored massive hydraulic engineering projects, previously unseen in the region, including the construction of moat systems and canals. Several of these were built to power mills. As many as 50 mills were constructed in Marienburg's (Malbork) territory alone in the 14th and 15th centuries.
The canal at Jurkowice, Poland, part of a 14th century system linking some 40 kilometres of waterways and lakes to the moats at Marienburg (Magnus Elander)
Written sources also testify to the resilience of native spirituality. Natural sacred sites continued to be used by the native population alongside the emerging Christian landscape.
Given the ethos of the crusades this was surprising, but it reflected both the limits of theocratic authority and the resilience of the native population.
The persistence of natural sacred sites is more evident in Livonia than in Prussia, where the influx of rural Catholic migrants over several centuries saw their gradual abandonment.
The offering tree at Öövesti farmstead in Räägu village, Halliste parish, Estonia (Heiki Valk)
In Lithuania, people continued to invest the landscape with spiritual importance for centuries after the official acceptance of Christianity.
The oak of Mingėla at the sacred site of Vieštovėnai, Lithuania (Vykintas Vaitkevičius)
In summary, the crusades had a noticeable impact on the environments of the eastern Baltic, but the most dramatic changes had already begun in preceding centuries. In this respect the new regime accentuated what the native societies had begun.
There was much local variation where compromises between ideology and pragmatism were made, reflecting different encounters between migrant and native cultures.
The environment therefore represents a fundamental lens for understanding cultural change.
Malbork castle, Poland (Magnus Elander)
Acknowledgements
The Ecology of Crusading: The Environmental Impact of Conquest, Colonisation and Religious Conversion in the Medieval Baltic was funded by the European Research Council (within the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n° 263735). It was preceded by a series of pilot studies supported by the University of Reading, the Society of Antiquaries , the Society for Medieval Archaeology and local institutional funds.
A considerable number of people in various countries have contributed to the success of this project . This has included the core team, its partners, collaborators and advisors, alongside undergraduate and postgraduate students in multiple institutions who have been involved at various levels, particularly in excavations, and during the various stages of post-excavation analysis.
If you would like more information about the project please get in touch .
All images are © the respective authors, specified in the associated captions. Please ask permission before using them. Images without attributions are in the public domain. Many of the photos above are by Magnus Elander , who we were fortunate enough to have shadowing our project and enabling us to create this visual narrative.
