An open strip-field system at its tipping point in the German-Dutch river Dinkel catchment Hein van Gils1, Andreas Mölder²* 1University of Pretoria Faculty of Natural & Agricultural Sciences, Department of Geography, Geoinformatics and Meteorology Private Bag X20 Hatfield 0028 Republic of South Africa 2Northwest German Forest Research Station Department A (Forest Growth) Grätzelstraße 2 D-37079 Göttingen Germany *corresponding author Phone: +49 551 69 401 313 Fax: +49 551 69 401 160 E-mail:
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[email protected] Author’s information Hein van Gils retired from Twente University, Enschede (the Netherlands). He currently teaches at the University of Pretoria (South Africa) and the Northeast Forestry University, Harbin (China). Several of his publications refer to legacies of historical agrarian landscapes. Andreas Mölder is researcher at the Northwest German Forest Research Institute, Göttingen (Germany). He is particularly interested in the development and ecology of cultural landscapes as affected by changing socio-ecological conditions. Abstract Three questions were addressed. Firstly, where in pre-19th century landscape did farmers hold strips, camps, meadows and shares in 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 kilometer diameter in the NW European cover sand belt. Our key data source was the 1827 A.D.