Vegetation history of the 5th mil. BC in the Central European Loess areas
Hanna Lindemann, Astrid Stobbe
Pollen data from Central European contexts reflects marked human impact in favorable areas settled by the earliest farming communities (Linear Pottery Culture). This picture seems to change only slightly until the end of the younger Neolithic period (4th mil. BC). Nonetheless, there is evidence that the expansion of settlement areas and human impact started already during the 1st half of the 5th mil. BC. For example, in the Northeastern Wetterau and its fringe areas/Hesse a reduction of lime and pine pollen and an increase of nonarboreal pollen can be documented, indicating settlement activities in hitherto unsettled peripheral areas. These observations have not been checked so far for Hesse, Main Franconia and the Rhineland as central settlement zones during the 5th mil. BC. Although numerous pollen archives have been analysed during the last decades the Middle Neolithic has often been excluded or has been analysed only in a rough chronological resolution. Moreover, for a more refined stratigraphic resolution more radiocarbon dates will be necessary. Next to this, geochemical and sedimentological analysis have been carried out only rudimentarily and an analysis of microcharcoal as an indicator of fire – as potential result of slash-and-burn agriculture – has not been applied systematically, so far. The identification of non‐pollen‐palynomorphs (NPP) as information source for animal husbandry (coprophilous fungal spores) or erosion events (Glomus) were partly unknown at that time. Basically, the pollen archives known so far (see fig. 1 and 2) are excellently suitable for further analysis and offer the basis for our research questions. In the context of our project we will drill them again aiming at a new, fine-grained analysis with state-of-the-art methods.