PONE-D-22-18464Societal and environmental transformations in late antique and early medieval Basel, SwitzerlandPLOS ONE

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MK received funding from the Masaryk University (grant number CZ.02.2.69/0.0/0./18_053/0016952; Postdoc2MUNIm order number 21 0053) and from the CRC1266 ‘Scales of Transformation’ at the University of Kiel and the German Research Foundation (grant number 290391021). MLCD’s research at Basel was funded by the University of Basel and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). 

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MK received funding from the European Commission and the Masaryk University, Brno; Czech Republic, grant number. CZ.02.2.69/0.0/0./18_053/0016952; Postdoc2MUNIm order number 21 0053.

MK received funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the CRC1266 Scales of Transformation, Kiel University, grant number: 290391021.

MLCD received funding from the University of Basel and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: This is an excellent and also innovative paper, although the introductory chapters 2.1.2 and 2.1.3. could have been written a bit more concise. The reliability and usefulness of environmental models does indeed to a large degree depend on the number of chosen variables, the comprehensiveness of the explanatory parameters, and (importantly!) the integration of socio-cultural decision-making into the model. The authors have clearly demonstrated that their approach (PDSI) has great potential to improve the spatio-temporal resolution of reconstructions concerning past human environment (and climate) interaction.

Reviewer #2: This article aims to reconstruct the development of rural settlements and land use patterns (i.e. crop production and pasture use) during the late antique and early medieval occupation of the Basel area.

The aim is to perform this reconstruction using information on topography, climatic conditions, soil properties, and ground and surface water resources.

The study succeeds in producing a series of important results for the period and area that trace the relationship between settlement development, crop production and pasture use, and drought, flooding, rising groundwater and waterlogged soil conditions.

It will require minor revisions, after which it will be ready for publication, I think.

Strengths:

- The article is well written, well structured.

- The methodological workflow based on freely available information online is a major strength of the research and sufficient detail is presented to replicate the research.

- The variables used in the study to build the “multiannual landscape vulnerability model”, namely graveyard and burial locations, topopgraphical and soil properties, climatic conditions and evidence for water resources, can be considered as adequately measured, despite the various assumptions made (including those related to water run-off).

- The consideration of the (Palmer Drought Severity Index) PDSI as an indicator of the runoff behavior used for the estimation of the Rhine discharge in section 2.4.1 seems correct.

- The model presented in section 2.4.2 is a good representation of the groundwater level and the aquifer thickness, as well as the topographical properties (i.e. elevation, slope, distance to hydrological systems such as the Rhine system) in the study areas where the probability of flooding, rising groundwater and waterlogged soil conditions are modelled.

Weaknesses:

The study has few weaknesses. It is transparent in its handling of the data, which is open and available, and in the assumptions it makes when processing the datasets and creating the “multiannual landscape vulnerability model”. I noticed two relatively minor issues here:

- The current title of the article, “Societal and environmental transformations in late antique and early medieval Basel, Switzerland”, does not accurately reflect the content. A more expressive title (perhaps an added subtitle?) should probably refer to the research focus on rural settlement development and land use patterns, and the modeling approach used.

- In section 2.4.2 it would be good to describe all variables used in the model. For example, at the moment v is not defined like many others.

Minor issues:

- Lines 69-71: There is something wrong with this sentence: “This is making is particularly difficult to trace past human activity spheres and to put them into a meaningful context under consideration of past environmental conditions.”

- Lines 96-99: This information is better included as end-/footnotes if possible: “(R environment: The R Project for Statistical Computing, https://www.r-project.org/about.html, last accessed, 28th of June 2022; QGIS, https://www.qgis.org/en/site/, last accessed, 28th of June 2022).”

- Lines 125 – 127: Check the use of “which” which may not be correct: “During the late 5th to the early 6th century AD, the region was included into the Frankish Kingdom, which administration and infrastructures still relied on Late Roman legacies [28–30].”

- Line 165: Change “know” to “known”

- Line 218: why is the number of burials (n) sometimes further specified as nLATEANTIQUITY here and sometimes not?

- Line 234: Museum of Antiquities of which city? Please specify

- Line 272: Put a space after “[55]”

- Line 341: Check the wording: ”the past 19th and 20th years”?

- Lines 361-362: Avoid using “harmonized” twice.

- Lines 512-515: Revise sentence: consider using “for” instead of “of” in “important role of local farming communities”, and best avoid using “during” twice.

- Line 979: “This illustrate” should become “This illustrates”

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Dr. Bert Groenewoudt

Reviewer #2: Yes: Piraye Hacıgüzeller

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Scales of transformations - Modelling settlement and land-use dynamics in Late Antique and Early Medieval Basel, Switzerland

PONE-D-22-18464R1

Dear Dr. Kempf,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Philippe De Smedt

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #2: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #2: The article now looks good; all suggested changes have been incorporated. I congratulate the authors on this really interesting article.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #2: No

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