Possible climatically driven, later prehistoric woodland decline on Ben Lomond, central Scotland

Abstract

Later prehistoric woodland decline over most parts of Scotland is widely regarded as having been anthropogenic, via a range of mechanisms, to create farmland. Climatic causes are seen only to have driven the rapid expansion and then terminal decline of Pinus sylvestris around 2000 cal BC. Here we report radiocarbon dated analyses of pollen, microscopic charcoal, coprophilous fungal spores and peat humification from a small, water-shedding interfluve peat bog at 230 m elevation on the west-facing slope of the mountain Ben Lomond in west-central Scotland. The record spans the interval ca. 3450 − 200 cal BC. It shows marked and rapid changes in woodland composition before ca. 2600 cal BC, and from then to ca. 1940 cal BC a gradual decline of Betula woodland. This happened with no palaeoecological or archaeological evidence for anthropogenic activity. Woodland decline is interpreted at this site as climatically driven, perhaps through paludification or, more likely, exposure to wind, within a period of pronounced climatic deterioration. Anthropogenic activities are hinted at only after ca. 850 cal BC.