Lesní řemesla v raném novověku: koncept

The text delineates and characterizes, on the basis of the study of domestic as well as foreign literature and primary sources, the groups of crafts and industries (for example, charcoal making, tar making, potash making) that are altogether called forest crafts. Forest crafts are then theoretically conceived as specialized exploitative and subsistence strategies of the Early Modern Era that within the frame of the so called traditional culture played an extraordinarily important role in local and regional contexts. Together with agriculture, hunting and gathering that in the Early Modern Era took place in woods, the forest crafts belong to the traditional systems of the exploitation of natural resources. This system of activities, through which the society of the time in an important way influenced its environment and supplemented its subsistence resources was crucial for the everyday life of the people living close to forests, but up to the beginning of modern forms of forest management constituted an inherent part of exploitation of the forests by their owners. Forest crafts bear several basic characteristics. At the first place, they are almost absolutely tied to the woods, with respect to materials as well as the workspace. The basic characteristics of forest crafts is technological (the use of chemical procedures for decomposing wood during production). The third and last basic feature of the forest crafts is tied to the craftsmen themselves, the bearers of relevant knowledge and skills, who could and did form specific social and economic structures, conditioned also by religious and linguistic divergences.