Soils and relief as a basis for a model to reconstruct the Iron Age land use pattern in the vicinity of a Celtic square enclosure in Southern Germany

The spatial distribution of fields, woodland, grassland or settlement areas in prehistoric time is nearly unknown. We developed a working scheme resulting in a model which reconstructs the land use pattern using the relief and soil parameters as the controlling factors of an agricultural land use. Here we present the results of a relief analysis and a soil mapping of a study site in Southern Germany which was used to reconstruct a "physiotopen model". The physiotopen model is a time independent model for a most likely spatial distribution of a land use pattern. The calculated areas (woodland, fields, grassland etc.) can be added with secondary information from the pollen analysis, the archaeology or the sediment chronology which leads to a land use model for a certain time.