Forests and foragers: exploitation of wood resources by Mesolithic and para-Neolithic societies in north-eastern Poland
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Forests and foragers: exploitation of wood resources by Mesolithic and para‑Neolithic societies in north‑eastern Poland Agnieszka Wacnik1 · Witold Gumiński2 · Katarzyna Cywa1 · Karolina Bugajska2 Received: 9 July 2019 / Accepted: 10 February 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Newly acquired palaeobotanical data, including pollen, charred and uncharred wood, provided an exhaustive overview of the temporal changes in woodlands, which changes are due to the cumulative effect of natural processes and the long-term impact of pre-agrarian societies. We used the unique advantage of the peat bog archaeological site at Szczepanki located on an island in the former Lake Staświn (Masurian Lake District) to get an overview of wood exploitation throughout the Stone Age. Special attention was paid to the period of the most intense settlement, the period of the para-Neolithic Zedmar culture. This culture is interesting due to its economy having not been fully recognized so far, especially with respect to the use of plant resources. The evidence from Szczepanki confirmed the use of 16 arboreal taxa, accessible in local woodlands, as a source of timber by foragers. The majority of both unworked wood and fragments bearing traces of processing has been discovered in layers corresponding to the Zedmar period. An important role in the economy was played by wood with medium or low mechanical properties that was however fissile and amenable to woodworking. In addition, other useful properties such as flexibility, lightness, water resistance, strength and ease of splitting were favoured in the selection. The temporal distribution of wood remains in cultural layers at Szczepanki was convergent with a pollen record documenting the course of postglacial migration and local growth of particular taxa, as well as with the archaeologically documented changes in the intensity and time frame of the settlement. Keywords Zedmar culture · Peat-bog archaeological site · Pre-agrarian societies · Vegetation history · Palynology · Charcoal and wood analysis
Introduction The diverse use of plant resources and the significance of selected plants for the economy of foragers has often been the subject of scientific discussions in the context of the Mesolithic (e.g. Zvelebil 1994; Bos et al. 2006; Innes et al. 2010; Deforce et al. 2013; Bishop et al. 2015; Warren et al. Communicated by K.-E. Behre. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-020-00778-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Agnieszka Wacnik [email protected] 1
W. Szafer Institute of Botany, Polish Academy of Sciences, Lubicz 46, 31‑512 Kraków, Poland
Institute of Archaeology, University of Warsaw, Krakowskie Przedmieście 26/28, 00‑927 Warsaw, Poland
2
2014; Albert and Innes 2015; Divišová and Šída 2015). Until now, much less information has been collected regarding the para-Neolithic societies. The para-Neolithic (synonyms: the Sub-Neolithic, or ceramic Mesolith
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