An open strip-field system at its tipping point in the German-Dutch River Dinkel catchment. Part 1

Three questions have been addressed. Firstly, where in the pre-nineteenth-century landscape did farmers hold strips, camps, meadows and shares in the commons? Secondly, did farmers each own strips and camps or were some specialised strip and others exclusively ‘camp’ farmers? Finally, can we corroborate or reject one of the alternative hypotheses: strip-field-first versus camp-first. The area of interest is the current cadastral district cum medieval parish Epe at today’s German-Dutch border as pars pro toto for the surrounding area of about 100 km diameter in the North-West European cover sand belt. Our key data source was the 1827 cadastre complemented by the historical topographic map and geological, soil and elevation maps. For population estimates, we used six tax registers from 1499–1750. All parcels per farmstead were identified in the cadastral registry, farms located on parcel maps and hamlet territories delineated as the aggregate of its farms. The following farm features were extracted from the cadastre and averaged per settlement: number of strips and strip-fields, parcel type, farm size, tenure, number of meadows, oak camps, crop camps, and pasture camps. Next, the following landscape features were identified from the map set per settlement: farmstead pattern, type of settlement, commons, strip-field, soil, and watercourse. We present the introduction, the materials and methods section, the historical and landscape context in Part 1, followed in Part 2 by our findings, a discussion, a hypothetical narrative consistent with our findings, and answers to our research questions.