When conducting considerations in the field of historical geography, we deal with two primary research areas: the natural landscape and the cultural landscape.<\/p>\n\n
The natural landscape of today’s Pomerania was shaped during the last glaciation, which took place approximately 21,000 years ago. Around 14,500 years ago, the glacier covering a significant part of contemporary Poland (up to the north of today’s Lower Silesia) retreated to the north, leaving behind a heavily diversified terrain relief and uncovering the Baltic Sea. Those interested can trace the history of successive glaciations and the related geomorphological changes at the permanent exhibition presented in the Geological Museum of the University of Szczecin at the Geocentre on Mickiewicza Street.<\/p>\n\n
At that time, the landscape characteristic of the Szczecin Lowland and the Pomeranian lakelands began to form, particularly regarding the hydrographic network and orography. At the mouth of the Oder (similarly to the Vistula), extensive deltas, marshes, and lagoons formed, smaller rivers acquired their mouths, and lakes took on their general outline. At the same time, groundwater levels and the Baltic Sea level rose. A characteristic feature of the Pomeranian landscape is also the high diversity of terrain elevation, particularly in the lakeland belt, alongside a fairly flat area stretching along the Baltic coast.<\/p>\n\n
The northernmost latitudinal zone is the Szczecin Coastland, which is part of the South Baltic Coastland, and this in turn is part of the Central European Lowland. It reaches about 50\u2013100 km inland. A flat landscape dominates here, with relatively small elevations (not exceeding 100 m above sea level). To the south of it stretches the West Pomeranian Lakeland, which, similarly to the coastland, is part of a larger subprovince\u2014the South Baltic Lakeland, within the aforementioned Central European Lowland. To the south, it borders the Note\u0107 River valley. Here, in turn, the diversification of the terrain relief is much greater (up to 300 m above sea level), shaped by belts of terminal and ground moraines, intersected by river valleys flowing northwards or, in the case of smaller ones, toward large and medium-sized rivers.<\/p>\n\n
Originally, after the retreat of the ice sheet, the vegetation cover was tundra-like, meaning a treeless area with low vegetation (dwarf birch thickets), characteristic of low-temperature regions. As the climate warmed, forests appeared\u2014initially birch-pine, and over time also coniferous, deciduous, and mixed. It should be added that this warming was not permanent, and over the centuries we witnessed quite significant temperature fluctuations. Thus, from the late Middle Ages (around 1300) to the end of the modern era (around 1800), Europe was visited by the so-called Little Ice Age, the apogee of which occurred at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries.<\/p>\n\n
Along with the appearance of man, the process of transforming the natural landscape began. Initially slow and almost imperceptible, with cultural progress, the development of human settlements and their organization, and above all the change from a nomadic to a settled lifestyle, it took on increasingly dynamic and expansive forms. Today, no primeval forest clusters and riverbeds have survived in Pomerania (especially after the major river regulation campaign in the 19th century), and the only elements close to their natural state are the orographic elements (terrain relief) that are the hardest to transform, which in many places have also been touched by human hand.<\/p>\n\n
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- Paleolithic and Mesolithic \u2013 c. 12,700 \u2013 4,100 BC<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Neolithic \u2013 c. 5,100 \u2013 2,000 BC<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Bronze Age \u2013 Early Iron Age \u2013 2,400 \u2013 400 BC<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Pre-Roman period \u2013 Migration Period \u2013 c. 500 BC \u2013 600 AD<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Middle Ages \u2013 from the 7th century AD<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\nThe first human groups appeared in the area of today’s Pomerania around 12,000 BC during the Paleolithic period. The oldest relics of human presence belong to the so-called Hamburg culture and are known from archaeological excavations in the vicinity of Szczecin. These groups led a nomadic lifestyle, moving in pursuit of reindeer herds migrating northwards in search of food. Their campsites took the form of dugouts, meaning that even back then, a rudimentary and rather minor human interference in the natural landscape was taking place. Over time, lean-tos began to be built alongside such dwelling pits. The primary materials used at that time to make tools and weapons were stone and worked reindeer antlers.<\/div>\nThe evolution of natural conditions under the influence of a changing climate also forced human adaptation. In the Mesolithic period, there was an intensification of water exploration and gathering, as well as\u2014due to the extinction of large mammals (such as mammoths)\u2014dispersed hunting for smaller game. Towards the end of this period and the beginning of the next, the Neolithic, a period begins of the gradual settling of hitherto moving groups and the building of increasingly cohesive cultures whose economy was also based on agriculture.<\/div>\nThe first groups of agricultural populations arrived in Pomerania from the south around 4,000 BC. These were representatives of the so-called Linear Pottery culture. Along with them, the nature of the economy changed, increasingly interfering with the geographical space. The cultivation of land and the domestication of cereals required preparing fields for cultivation and clearing forests; the domestication and breeding of animals required the use of pastures; and a settled lifestyle required building permanent homes based on materials sourced from nature in a given area. All of this began to transform the natural landscape more and more dynamically, and large megalithic structures\u2014serving funeral functions (as tombs) and perhaps also sacred functions\u2014became a permanent element that has survived to this day. They are associated with another culture, the so-called Funnelbeaker culture. In Western Pomerania, such megaliths can be found, among other places, in Kr\u0119pcewo, Dolice (home to the “Gates of Time” Primeval Open-Air Museum), and Karsko.<\/div>\nThe stabilization of such a situation took place in the subsequent period\u2014the Bronze Age. Trade and settlements began to develop then, initially having an open character with clearly separated handicraft “districts.” Over time, due to unrest and conflicts, places of residence began to be surrounded by palisades and earthen ramparts, which led to the creation of defensive settlements\u2014fortified gords. The dynamic growth of Pomerania’s population occurred during the period of dominance of the so-called Lusatian culture, particularly in the Lower Oder valley, and then to the east of it, between the Pars\u0119ta and \u0141eba rivers. Deposits found at archaeological sites from this period indicate that tools and materials from, among other places, the lower Elbe region and Denmark were used and processed locally.<\/div>\nAlong with the decline of the Lusatian culture, the population inhabiting Pomerania enters the period of the so-called Iron Age. Although iron products, obtained from surface bog iron ores, appear in the initial period, bronze products still predominate. The exploitation of ore-bearing deposits is yet another stage of human interference in the natural environment.<\/div>\nAt the turn of the Bronze and Iron Ages (6th \/ 4th century BC), the first groups of Germanic tribes, migrating from the area of Jutland and the lower Elbe, appeared in Pomerania. These were representatives of the so-called Jastorf culture. Another stage of Germanic presence in Pomerania was the arrival of the Goths and Gepids from southern Scandinavia (1st century BC \u2013 4th century AD). The Wielbark culture associated with them, which was under the influence of Roman patterns (among other things through the amber route leading toward the Baltic Sea), is characterized by monumental burials in the form of stone circles, visible in the landscape even today.<\/div>\nThe migration of the Gepids to the south, triggered by Hunnish invasions and the fall of Rome, and forming part of the Migration Period, left Pomerania almost entirely devoid of its previously well-functioning settlements. Consequently, the natural landscape slowly began to regenerate\u2014forests expanded into meadows, and meadows into arable fields. The depopulation of Pomerania was not absolute, of course; however, the relatively sparse settlement caused the Slavic population flowing in from the southeast (from around the 6th century AD) to settle these areas peacefully, bringing a different, more modest material culture, but a quite efficient economy based primarily on agriculture. On the basis of these populations, Slavic tribes began to take shape, conventionally called “Pomeranians,” although their organization was relatively loose and they did not form a unified political entity.<\/div>\nThis situation began to change under the influence of external factors. In the second half of the 10th century, Pomeranian lands became the target of expansion by the Piast state. Along with the crisis of Polish statehood, native state-forming processes began to emerge in Pomerania. Marian R\u0119bkowski places them at the turn of the 10th and 11th centuries. At the time of the emergence of the seeds of the state, the settlement structure\u2014which had the greatest impact on the natural landscape while simultaneously serving as the primary exemplum<\/i> of the cultural landscape\u2014according to the aforementioned researcher (and earlier findings) looked as follows: “(…) a settlement cluster corresponding to a tribe consisted of a series of smaller units, usually formed by several neighboring settlements, less frequently a single settlement. Their inhabitants exploited an area ranging from several to several dozen square kilometers. (…) With only few exceptions, a privileged position within such a community was held by a defensive settlement, or gords, which also manifested itself in a special way within space.” As M. R\u0119bkowski further points out, it is typically in such places that the leaders of these communities were situated, and their physical and symbolic distinction led to the “hierarchization of social space” characteristic of state organizations. From the 9th century onwards, the gord became the most frequent settlement unit, and their number over a span of about two hundred years reached several hundred units.<\/div>
Aside from the “capital” functions of the most important gord in a given settlement cluster (e.g., Ko\u0142obrzeg from the late 9th century onward), they also served other purposes. They could act as border guard posts within the area inhabited by a given tribe or were assigned sacred functions. No less important were gords that served as centers of crafts and trade, located especially in the coastal zone or with convenient (water) access to the Baltic Sea. This, in turn, is associated with the modification of riverbanks for the construction of ports and minor river regulation works.<\/p>\n\n
The rise of the organized rule of the Griffins in the 11th century radically transformed internal relations while simultaneously interacting with neighbors.<\/p>\n\n
***\u00a0<\/p>\n\n
\nThe issues outlined above, showing in which areas the transformation of the natural landscape into a cultural one took place, will be developed in monographic texts. At this point, we should also examine the issue of borders\u2014sometimes distinguished by researchers as a separate political landscape (though treated by us as an element of the cultural landscape)\u2014which define the scope of both what we call the Duchy of Pomerania and the internal divisions organized within the state. Unfortunately, research into the formation of borders and their variability over time has not been conducted systematically for Pomerania. The interested reader will find them in monographic articles and recommended literature, though most of these are general in nature, as our knowledge becomes more precise with the increase of written sources and, later, cartographic ones.<\/div>The very concept of a “border” in the scope of our interest means the existence of a territory separated from neighboring ones, as well as an area within which internal divisions occur. It may have a state, official (administrative), ecclesiastical, or private (land ownership) character. The caveat that must be formulated at this point is that linear borders, marked out on the ground in a way that is obvious to us today, only appear in Pomerania in the mid-17th century, when, following the collapse of Pomeranian statehood, the delimitation of the border between Sweden and Brandenburg took place. Relics of this division can still be found today, for example, in the Beech Forest (*Puszcza Bukowa*) on the outskirts of Szczecin. In the Middle Ages and the early modern era, the term “borderlands” is more capacious, where demarcations were based on natural features\u2014watercourses, forest edges, boulders, or trees, on which appropriate markings were sometimes made.<\/p>\n\n
\nFor the territory of the Duchy of Pomerania, in addition to state borders that changed over time, we can distinguish the borders of individual duchies (Szczecin and Wolgast), principalities (e.g., S\u0142upsk, Stargard, etc.), “lands” (e.g., the land of Usedom) and other “heraldic” component parts of the state (e.g., the County of Cieszyno \/ Grafschaft Chozkow<\/i>), ducal domains and administrative offices (Amt<\/i>), church administration (differing for the diocesan church and monastic provinces), and landownership\u2014both noble and municipal.<\/div>\nThe initial southern extent of the Griffins’ rule was based roughly on the Warta-Note\u0107 river line, but from the mid-13th century onwards, they were gradually and successively pushed northwards by the Brandenburgers. They successively lost the areas soon called the New March (with towns founded by Pomeranian dukes, such as Chojna), the Land of Barnim, and then the Uckermark. The New March wedge drove deep north into Pomerania, reaching as far as \u015awidwin while simultaneously encompassing Drawsko and Choszczno.<\/div>Despite unrest and border wars with the southern neighbor continuing until the end of the 15th century, this state of affairs persisted for the next 150 years. Major changes occurred after the death of Bogislaw XIV and the extinction of the dynasty (1637), coupled with the conclusion of the Thirty Years’ War (1648). At the Congress of Westphalia, the partition of the Griffin lands between Sweden and Brandenburg was decreed; the demarcation did not take place until 1653, based on fieldwork delimitation. Conventionally, the border ran along the line of the Oder River, with the Swedes pushing a multi-kilometer “buffer zone” eastward (expanding sharply southward toward Pyrzyce) to ensure that the river current was entirely controlled by the Scandinavians. Szczecin and the western, economically more developed part of the Griffins’ realm fell to Sweden, while the eastern part (with its capital in Stargard) went to Brandenburg.<\/p>\n\n
Subsequent changes occurred after the Great Northern War. Sweden’s defeat allowed Prussia (the “successor” to Brandenburg) to occupy Szczecin and shift the border with Sweden to the Peene River (1720). Ultimately, Swedish rule in the territory of the former Duchy of Pomerania was ended by the Napoleonic Wars and the complete occupation of the area west of the Peene by Prussia. Thus, from 1815 until 1945, the entire Pomeranian region was within the Prussian state and subsequently the unified German Empire.<\/p>\n\n
\nThe reforms of the Prussian kingdom in 1815, prompted by defeats in the wars with France, introduced, among other things, new administrative divisions. For Pomerania, the Province of Pomerania (Provinz Pommern<\/i>) was established with its capital in Szczecin, the reach of which roughly coincided with the extent of the early modern Griffin state. The province was divided into three regencies: Stralsund, Szczecin, and K\u00f6slin (Regierungsbezirk Stralsund, Stettin, and K\u00f6slin<\/i>), and these, in turn, into districts (Kreis<\/i>). In the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, the New March districts of \u015awidwin, Drawsko, Choszczno, and Strzelce were successively incorporated into the Province of Pomerania. Perhaps unintentionally, but after several centuries, the borders of Pomerania once again rested along the Note\u0107 River valley.<\/div>\nOn a local scale, significant administrative changes took place in the case of Szczecin and\u2014to a lesser extent\u2014Greifswald. In 1939, the so-called Greater Szczecin (Gro\u00df Stettin<\/i>) was created by incorporating two neighboring towns\u2014Police and D\u0105bie\u2014into its boundaries. Slightly earlier that same year, the borders of Greifswald were expanded to include Wieck and Eldena, though the scale was incomparably smaller than in the case of the capital city of Szczecin.<\/div>***<\/p>\n\n
The most important internal division within the Griffin state ran between the Szczecin and Wolgast parts, with this division running roughly along latitudinally rather than along the line of the Oder, as the location of both capitals (Wolgast and Szczecin) might suggest. This was the dominant division, interrupted by relatively short periods of unification, such as under Bogislaw X or Bogislaw XIV. In 1325, the Principality of Rugia\u2014which later included Pomerania’s largest city, Stralsund\u2014became part of the Duchy of Wolgast. Another important principality was the Duchy of S\u0142upsk, with its capital in S\u0142upsk or Dar\u0142owo. During the reign of the senior duke, his younger brother(s) or son(s) were typically endowed with a domain (principality, district) where they learned the art of governance and from which they sustained themselves. Thus, we can note, for example, the ephemeral Duchy of Stargard, as well as one of the oldest\u2014the Duchy of Demmin (from the town of Demmin). The eastern borders of the Duchy were flanked by the lands of L\u0119bork and Byt\u00f3w, granted in 1455 as a fief by King Casimir Jagiellon and ruled by the Griffins until the extinction of the dynasty in 1637.<\/p>\n
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