Page 604 - Het middeleeuwse kastelenlandschap van het Oversticht - Diana Spiekhout

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Summary
These definitions of castle and landscape formed the basis for the castle landscape model. To study the interaction between castles and their environments, we had to reconstruct the three dimensions of Jacobs’ model. Various building blocks were required for this purpose. The first building block constituted an inventory of all the sites that meet the aforementioned definition of a castle, plus all the sites that likely hold defensive architecture from the Middle Ages but whose context is not entirely known. Noble homes constructed at later dates and that already existed in the Middle Ages but of which no sources remain that describe the exterior have also been included in the inventory as possible castles.
A second building block formed a reconstruction of the physical mediaeval landscape (matterscape) at a territorial level. We decided to take the situation circa 1400 as a starting point, although it should be noted that the landscape was subject to a number of important changes between 1050 and 1450, the formative period of the castles in this study. The reconstruction map should therefore not be interpreted literally without the associated background information from chapters two and three and that in the catalogue. Yet the map is of huge importance to the interpretation of the castles at a territorial level. Site conditions and accessibility in the Middle Ages determined the choice of location of settlements and the position of routes. Only the high and dry protruding parts of the landscape from the Pleistocene and the levees along the rivers were inhabited around the year 1000. Counties such as Drenthe, for example, were partially enclosed by bogs and could only be reached via Groningen or Coevorden, across high and dry land. In the High Middle Ages, colonists of the numerous bogs and marshes in the Oversticht region, such as those between Coevorden and Emmen and in the Mastenbroek area near Zwolle, began reclaiming them. These agricultural peat reclamations have also been included in the map. In addition, in the twelfth to fourteenth century, many brookland areas in Salland and Twente were reclaimed. The changing accessibility in certain periods and the dynamic brought by these periods have without doubt influenced the choice of location for castles. This also applies to the positioning of the elements that humans added to the landscape, such as roads, settlements and meeting places.
By analysing the characteristics of castles and then projecting them into the space, it became possible to make observations in time and space. As it turned out, the location of the oldest fortifications of Hunenborg (near Volthe) and Schulenborg (near Almelo) deviated from the other castles in terms of their locations, namely in remote wilderness far away from the interregional traffic routes. Younger structures, on the other hand, are found closer to country roads or waterways. The first castles that were built in the area were probably erected in the period between 1300 and 1400, mainly by vassals of the bishop of Utrecht. The castles were by no means equally spread out across the landscape; there is a clear clustering around rivers. Other noticeable concentrations can be observed in the southwest of Twente, Groningen, the north of the Drenthe region and the southern edge of this province. In comparison, the central part of Drenthe was left empty.
The developments observed in the physical landscape are an expression of the society that produced them. Researching why a regional lord commissioned the construction of a castle in the Oversticht area at a certain location and at a certain time therefore requires a careful examination of the political, economic and social conditions in Mediaeval societies (powerscape), including the written and unwritten rules in force at the time. For this purpose, chapter three includes an overview of the power landscape of the High and Late Middle Ages in the Oversticht region. In studying this aspect, the focus was laid on the relationship between the development of territorial authority and castle building. By studying episcopal castle politics and analysing the results, it became possible to link the observations made in the physical landscape to the power landscape. This way, a more comprehensive overview could be gained of the construction of castles based on form, time, space and society.
Based on this overview, it turned out to be possible to get a relatively clear overview of the broad outlines of castle building throughout the ages. Although the bishop had been granted count’s rights decades before 1060 to 1075, and owned immutable goods gifted to him by