Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1893/30154
Appears in Collections:Biological and Environmental Sciences Journal Articles
Peer Review Status: Refereed
Title: Opening the woods: towards a quantification of Neolithic clearance around the Somerset Levels and Moors
Author(s): Farrell, Michelle
Bunting, M Jane
Sturt, Fraser
Grant, Michael
Aalbersberg, Gerard
Batchelor, Rob
Brown, Alex
Druse, Denise
Hill, Tom
Hollinrake, Arthur
Jones, Julie
Tinsley, Heather
Bayliss, Alex
Marshall, Peter
Richer, Suzi
Whittle, Alasdair
Contact Email: alexandra.bayliss@stir.ac.uk
Keywords: Somerset Levels and Moors
Multiple Scenario Approach
Chronological modelling
Palynology
Neolithic
Land cover
Clearance
Issue Date: Jun-2020
Date Deposited: 23-Sep-2019
Citation: Farrell M, Bunting MJ, Sturt F, Grant M, Aalbersberg G, Batchelor R, Brown A, Druse D, Hill T, Hollinrake A, Jones J, Tinsley H, Bayliss A, Marshall P, Richer S & Whittle A (2020) Opening the woods: towards a quantification of Neolithic clearance around the Somerset Levels and Moors. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 27 (2), pp. 271-301. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-019-09427-9
Abstract: Environmental reconstructions from pollen records collected within archaeological landscapes have traditionally taken a broadly narrative approach, with few attempts made at hypothesis testing or formal assessment of uncertainty. This disjuncture between the traditional interpretive approach to palynological data and the requirement for detailed, locally specific reconstructions of the landscapes in which people lived has arguably hindered closer integration of palaeoecological and archaeological datasets in recent decades. Here we implement a fundamentally different method for reconstructing past land cover from pollen records to the landscapes of and around the Somerset Levels and Moors — the Multiple Scenario Approach (MSA) — to reconstruct land cover for a series of 200-year timeslices covering the period 4200–2000 cal BC. Modelling of both archaeological and sediment chronologies enables integration of reconstructed changes in land cover with archaeological evidence of contemporary Neolithic human activity. The MSA reconstructions are presented as a series of land cover maps and as graphs of quantitative measures of woodland clearance tracked over time. Our reconstructions provide a more nuanced understanding of the scale and timing of Neolithic clearance than has previously been available from narrative based interpretations of pollen data. While the archaeological record tends to promote a view of long-term continuity in terms of the persistent building of wooden structures in the wetlands, our new interpretation of the palynological data contributes a more dynamic and varying narrative. Our case study demonstrates the potential for further integration of archaeological and palynological datasets, enabling us to get closer to the landscapes in which people lived.
DOI Link: 10.1007/s10816-019-09427-9
Rights: © The Author(s) 2019 This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
Licence URL(s): http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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