Pieter Rodts

PROJECT TITLE

Beastly Traces and Shared Spaces: encountering human-animal communities in the Sonian Forest 

PROJECT SUMMARY

Human-animal relations have played a crucial yet often overlooked role in shaping landscapes over time. The Beastly Traces and Shared Spaces project (BTSS) explores the intersection of archaeology, human-animal studies, and the infrastructural turn to understand how the interaction between humans and animals has shaped the landscape in the Sonian Forest from the medieval period to the present. By focusing on the material traces of these interactions – paths, earthen walls, trees, clearings, and other infrastructures – this study examines how animals, both wild and domesticated, influenced the development, use, and transformations of the Sonian landscape alongside human actors.

The BTSS project is structured around four key work packages. First, it engages with theoretical debates in the infrastructural and animal turns, refining archaeological approaches to study past human-animal relations through the lens of material infrastructure. Second, it develops a methodology for identifying and interpreting historical infrastructure using material remains, archival sources, vegetation patterns, and data from archaeological science. Third, it reconstructs the long-term history of human-animal interactions in the Sonian Forest, focusing on how changing forms of infrastructure mediated these relationships over time. Finally, the research applies its findings to contemporary forest management, creating historical maps, public walking routes, and outreach initiatives to raise awareness about the lasting impact of past infrastructure on present-day biodiversity and human-wildlife coexistence.

Joint project with Leefmilieu Brussel/Bruxelles Environment, funded by the Brussels Capital Region - Innoviris.

EDUCATION

• Master of Arts in Art History and Archaeology, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 2022
• Research Master of Arts in Ancient History, Leiden University, 2018
• Master of Arts in History, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 2015
• Bachelor of Arts in History, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 2014

KEYWORDS

Human-animal interactions, landscape archaeology, ancient infrastructure, forest management, Sonian Forest

SUPERVISORS

Prof. dr. Marc De Bie (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)

Ir. Frederik Vaes (Leefmilieu Brussel/Bruxelles Environment)