The Historical Geography of the Amstel Area (800–1275 AD)
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Netherlands Journal of Geosciences — Geologie en Mijnbouw |94 – 4 | 353–360 | 2015 doi:10.1017/njg.2014.42 Digging the river: the historical geography of the Amstel area (800–1275 AD) C. de Bont Paganellus Minor, Rhenen, the Netherlands. Email: [email protected] Manuscript received: 17 January 2014, accepted: 25 November 2014 Abstract Around 800 AD the peatlands around Amstelland were drained by two rivers. The ‘northern’ Amstel discharged surplus water directly into Lake Almere, which from the 12th century onwards was enlarged to form the Sudersee (in Dutch: Zuiderzee). The ‘southern’ Amstel was a near-abandoned westernmost arm of the River Vecht discharging the poorly drained borderland around the river Vecht into Lake Almere/the Sudersee. As part of the reclamation of peatlands associated with agricultural activities between the end of the 10th and the mid-13th centuries, the rivers were connected via a canal, thus creating the river Amstel, as it is known today. Keywords: historical geography, Amstel, Amstelland, Mediaeval peat reclamation Introduction reclamation history of the peatland, in which pre-urban Ams- terdam has its origins. It took less than three centuries to reclaim the vast peat areas near Amsterdam. Reclamation started at the end of the 10th Text 1: Historiography century and was completed by the end of the 13th century. Within these three centuries, the morphology of the peatlands In modern Amsterdam, the dug Amstel canal is the part of changed considerably: peat domes and ridges, which reached the Amstel river running from Omval to the Blauwbrug. The around 4 m above sea level (the ‘Dutch mountains’ of the west- historiography on this idea starts with Groesbeek, who in 1966 ern Netherlands) completely disappeared, and catchment areas, cautiously questioned the idea of one river Amstel (Groesbeek, watershed margins and river drainage all changed. It has long 1966). In 1973 the soil scientist Pons was the first researcher to been considered that during the High Middle Ages the former propose the possibility of a partly excavated river course (Pons, bailiwick of Amstelland was drained by one river, which had 1973). Since then, several authors have discussed this issue. In given this whole area its name, Amstel, and some centuries 2004 de Bont introduced a new historical geographic approach, later the city of Amsterdam. For palaeogeographers, there was which in 2008 was expounded as a major part of his dissertation no question about it: at least for the last two millennia the (de Bont, 2008: 484–511). For an extended historiography on Amstel river and its branches flowed through Amstelland dis- the matter, see de Bont (2008: 475–482). charging into the Almere, the successor of Lake Flevo in Roman times and the predecessor of the former ‘Sudersee’ (the coun- There is some dispute amongst authors regarding the timing terpart of the North Sea). of clay deposition alongside the Amstel river. According to some This paper demonstrates that around 800 AD Amstelland researchers, the earliest clay soils (clay on peat) date back to was drained by two rivers, which between the 11th and 13th the Early Middle Ages (de Gans & Bunnik, 2011). However, the centuries were connected by the excavation of a canal more clay was deposited in a rather short period after the digging than 2 km long (Text 1). It is evident that this idea will not of the canal that connected the northern and southern Amstel, only change our understanding of Mediaeval water manage- but before this newly created river course was dammed and non- ment in the Amstelland area, but also of the Mediaeval agrarian agrarian settlement developed on both riverbanks; the name of C Netherlands Journal of Geosciences Foundation 2015 353 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.42, on 30 Sep 2021 at 06:26:10, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/njg.2014.42 Netherlands Journal of Geosciences — Geologie en Mijnbouw this settlement, Amestelledamme (literally translated as dam in part, the southern Amstel, which represents the most western the river Amstel), later became Amsterdam. arm of the river Vecht system; it also drained into Lake Almere. To disentangle this Gordian knot it is necessary to discover The upper course of the southern-Amstel rose on the western when the Amstel canal was cut and when it was dammed. This slope of this secondary watershed, where centuries later Lake requires an appraisal of the natural landscape in the Amstel Watergraafsmeer developed. region around 800 AD and the character of Mediaeval agrarian On onomastic grounds, it was possible to reconstruct the old peat reclamation, which preceded the rise of Amestelledamme, name of this upper branch of the southern Amstel as ∗tumapa, a village occupied by fishermen and craftsmen. which means ‘running water’ (de Bont, 2008: 559) (‘words with In contrast to physical geographers and other geoscientists an asterisk are postulated or hypothetical forms, that is they who study the landforms and sediments of the past, historical are words not recorded in independent use or only found in use geographers often seem to lack hard evidence and sometimes at a later date’ (definition used by A.D. Mills, 1998, Oxford Dic- historical sources are not available. This discipline was once tionary of English Place Names (new edition), Oxford University compared with Emmental cheese; a historical geographer has Press, p. 401)). to cope with the fact that there are many holes in our histori- This hydronym fits in with some others north of the IJ basin, cal knowledge. The oldest more or less reliable maps available for example Jisp and Stierop, in which the etymon apa can also for the western Netherlands date from the 16th century and be recognised, meaning ‘water’ (Krahe, 1964: 21–24; K¨unzel are closely connected to Mediaeval religious activities. These et al., 1988), in connection with a determinative ‘bubbling’, documentary sources are relatively sparse in coverage and even ‘gurgling’ or even ‘foaming’ (Sch¨onfeld, 1955, s.v. Jisp, Stierop). archaeological (artefactual) material lacks precision, for exam- In this historical geographic context the apa hydronym forms ple the finds from Mediaeval settlement in this area all date the opposite of the ee hydronym (IJ, Diem, Waterlandse Die) in between 1000 and 1300 AD, a timeframe of changing dynamics its meaning of ‘hardly floating’ or even ‘stagnant water’ (de Bont in these peatlands. & Kleij, 2012: 17–18). Some of the old prehistoric hydronyms in In this paper the reconstruction of the early Mediaeval land- the western part of the Netherlands seem to indicate the nat- scape and the natural drainage structure in the Amstelland ural morphology and drainage system of the natural peatland area is presented. A general picture of the reclamation and (Fig. 1). settlement history from the 9th until the mid-13th centuries The western part of Amstelland was covered with olig- is provided. The natural landscape dynamics are described as otrophic peat ridges whilst the eastern part consisted of more well as those created by peat reclamation activities, which it- eutrophic peat plains. East of the river Vecht (the northwestern self affected the people who drained the landscape. The lack of branch of the Rhine system), another oligotrophic peat ridge many contemporary written sources is offset by the availabil- egressed to the western slope of the Pleistocene ice-pushed ity of very reliable and detailed mid-19th century topographic ridges of the Gooi area (de Bont, 2008: 347–369, fig. 239). maps (the topographical archive). Working with this archive The natural water system southeast of Amsterdam was part requires a critical analysis of the resource, especially how to of the discharging system of the river Vecht. The drainage of recognise/distinguish younger, post-Mediaeval historical infor- the peatland on both sides of the upper course of the southern mation (de Bont, 2008: 34–37, 237–272). Amstel, being the most western blind arm of the Rhine-Vecht system discharging in a northern direction, was rather poor. Although there is not too much hard evidence for the existence The natural landscape around 800 AD of a secondary watershed between the northern Amstel and the southern Amstel around 800 AD, the presence of (at least) one Amstelland was part of an enormous peat area, which started mesotrophic peat layer is possible (de Bont, 2008: 479–480). to grow around 5500 BC and reached its optimum spatial extent around 800 AD (Vos et al., 2011: 42–69). During the Early Middle Ages the former proto-IJ basin, a prehistoric watercourse (Vos Agrarian peat reclamations et al, 2011: 47, 51, 55; Lange et al., 2004), was partly impass- able, filled with eutrophic and sometimes even mesotrophic In the year 1113 AD, the Bishop of Bremen (Germany) invited peat (Fig. 1). The Great Holland Watershed formed the back- some inhabitants of the peat areas along the mouth of the bone of the vast Mediaeval peatlands in the province of North river Rhine into his diocese in order to drain and reclaim the Holland, north and south of the proto-IJ basin. A secondary wa- peatlands along the river Weser and river Elbe (Koch, 1970: tershed was located southeast of the Late Mediaeval city centre nr. 98). These ‘Hollanders’ (as they were called in the Bishop’s of Amsterdam, running through the area now occupied by Lake charter) took along with them a reclamation system in which Watergraafsmeer. Northern Amstelland was occupied by a river a totally new technical and juridical approach was used (van that is called here the northern Amstel, which drained into Lake der Linden, 1956, 1982;deBont,2008: 126–128; van der Ven, Almere.