Digital publication offers new insights into the heath’s thousand-year history

The digital publication A Place for the Heathlands? explores the evolving relationships between humans and heathlands across epochs, from the Holocene to the Anthropocene.

More than five thousand years ago, the Neolithic communities of Northern Europe began to expand the open heather-based ecosystem that we know as heathlands. Through a combination of fire and grazing their livestock, humans cleared the post-glacial forests and expanded the niche for Calluna vulgaris (heather) and other heathland plants. Heather, an evergreen shrub, served as a vital resource – for winter grazing, for fuel, for tools, for thatch, for byre-bedding, and as fertiliser. The multiple affordances of heather meant that the Calluna heathlands, over time, became deeply embedded in the evolving domestic and funerary architecture. In these heathland landscapes, wide networks of mobility, transhumance and exchange developed.

The publication is published in collaboration with the Jutland Archaeological Society and is freely available to all at www.heathland.place

About the project

The Heathland Project (ANTHEA) is funded by the European Research Council. The project is hosted by Aarhus University and runs for a period of five years, starting in 2020.The project covers the period from 2800 BC to 1000 AD, with a special focus on the earliest spread of the heath and how this type of landscape survives through millennia.

Read more about the project here.