Abandoned village

An abandoned village is a village that has, for some reason, been deserted. In many countries, and throughout history, thousands of villages have been deserted for a variety of causes. Abandonment of villages is often related to epidemic, famine, war, climate change, environmental destruction, or deliberate clearances.

Hundreds of villages in Nagorno-Karabakh went deserted following the Nagorno-Karabakh War. Between 1988 and 1993, 400,000 ethnic Azeris and Kurds fled the area and nearly 200 villages in Armenia itself populated by Azeris and Kurds were abandoned by 1991. Likewise nearly 300,000 Armenians fled from Azerbaijan between 1988 and 1993, including 50 villages populated by Armenians in Northern Artsakh that were abandoned. Majority of the Armenian settlements and churches outside the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic have been destroyed including those in Nakhichevan.

In Australia, the government requires operators of mining towns to remove all traces of the town when it is abandoned. This has occurred in the case of Mary Kathleen, Goldsworthy and Shay Gap. Some towns have been lost or moved when dams are built.

Villages have been abandoned as a result of the Cyprus dispute. Some of these are reported to be landmined.

There are hundreds of abandoned villages, known as , in Germany. Geographer Kurt Scharlau categorized the different types in the 1930s, making distinctions between temporary and permanent Wüstung, settlements used for different purposes (farms or villages), and the extent of abandonment (partial or total). His scheme has been expanded, and has been criticized for not taking into account expansion and regression. A distinction is commonly made between Flurwüstungen (farmed areas) and Ortswüstungen (sites where buildings formerly stood) by archaeologists. The most drastic period of abandonment in modern times was during the 14th and 15th centuries – before 1350, there were about 170,000 settlements in Germany, and this had been reduced by nearly 40,000 by 1450. As in Britain, the Black Death played a large role in this, as did the growth of large villages and towns, the Little Ice Age, the introduction of crop rotation, and war (in Germany, particularly the 30 Years War). In later times, the German Empire created a number of training grounds for the military that were eventually abandoned.

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