Petr Šída Receives the Magnesia Litera Award for Non-fiction
Archaeologist Assoc. Prof. Petr Šída from the Department of Archaeology at the Philosophical Faculty, University of Hradec Králové, has received this year’s prestigious Magnesia Litera in the non-fiction category. He prepared the awarded book together with Assoc. Prof. Petr Pokorný from the Laboratory of Archaeobotany and Palaeoecology (LAPE). The award confirms the publication’s outstanding contribution to understanding landscape development and the relationship between humans and nature.
The award-winning book focuses on the postglacial development of the landscape and the complex relationships between the natural environment and human civilization. The authors combine approaches from several scientific disciplines, including ecology, botany, archaeology, and Quaternary geology. They show that understanding the distant past is only possible through careful work with indirect evidence.
A key role is played by natural archives: lake and peat bog sediments, soil layers, and deposits found near rock overhangs. These sources preserve information about vegetation development, the occurrence of fires, and climate changes over approximately the last 16,000 years. The analysis of pollen grains, charcoal remains, and archaeological layers makes it possible to reconstruct how the landscape gradually changed and how humans influenced these changes.
The book’s conclusions are also relevant to current debates on nature conservation. The authors emphasize that landscapes have been shaped for millennia by both natural processes and human activity. Variability is a natural feature of landscapes, and maintaining biodiversity depends on a diverse mosaic of different habitats. Therefore, according to the authors, there is no single “correct” solution.
Assoc. Prof. Petr Šída
Petr Šída is one of the leading Czech archaeologists specializing in the Paleolithic and Mesolithic periods and in human–environment relationships. He has long focused on the study of settlements and landscapes in the context of environmental change and collaborates with experts from natural sciences, which is clearly reflected in the awarded publication. He works in academia, contributing to both teaching and research, and his work is strongly interdisciplinary. He is the author or co-author of numerous scholarly studies and monographs. His expertise is also confirmed by the prestigious DSc. degree, awarded for exceptional research achievements.
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