Deserting villages – Emerging Market towns

The present book focuses on the changing landscape of settlements in the central part of the Great Hungarian Plain, Hungary. Though most of these aspects were studied and analyzed in various historical, ethnographical and archaeological publications, this book is the first attempt to write up the comprehensive and interdisciplinary summary on the landscape and settlement history of the Danube-Tisza Interfluve Region. The main purpose of the author was to give an overview on the development and transformation of settlement systems and land management practices, embedded in the contemporaneous political, economic and environmental background. The book aims at presenting how the network of late medieval villages and market towns emerged from the thirteenth century onwards, and how this pattern was replaced by a few nuclei of market towns surrounded by deserted village lands. This study also describes the topographical and morphological development of Kecskemét, which market town became the main urban focus in the central part of the Interfluve area by the fifteenth century, bringing a major economic expansion in the sixteenth century.

The book intends to serve as a basic methodological volume for those studying settlement history, economic history, local history, archaeology, ethnography or interested in landscape studies. Thus, the present book can promote international interest in Hungarian settlement history, and will be used as a basis for comparative studies in both urban and rural context.