Neolithic land-use dynamics in northwest Ireland: multi-proxy evidence from Lough Arrow, County Sligo
- PDF / 4,173,160 Bytes
- 21 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 59 Downloads / 137 Views
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Neolithic land‑use dynamics in northwest Ireland: multi‑proxy evidence from Lough Arrow, County Sligo Susann Stolze1,2,3 · Thomas Monecke1 Received: 19 December 2019 / Accepted: 18 July 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract A high-resolution multi-proxy study of lake sediments from Loughbrick Bay in Lough Arrow, County Sligo, Ireland provides a detailed record of Neolithic vegetation history and land-use change. The high concentration of megalithic monuments around Lough Arrow suggests that the region was a centre of settlement and ritual activity during the Irish Neolithic. The pollen record indicates that human activities, including farming, intensified ca. 100 years after the mid-Holocene elm decline, which is dated to 3820 bc. Pastoral and arable farming formed part of the Neolithic subsistence economy, in particular during the first half of the Neolithic. Although levels of human impact were low during most of the later Neolithic, allowing woodland recovery, short periods of arable farming recurred during that time. Human pressure on the landscape increased again at the end of the Neolithic and during the Chalcolithic period. Interruption of farming and settlement activities often coincided with wetter climate. Comparison of this study with records from nearby lakes shows that the type of farming varied at a local scale. While pastoral farming was widespread, cereal cultivation was spatially and temporally restricted. The pollen evidence suggests that wheat was the predominant crop during the earlier Neolithic, whereas barley became more important during the later Neolithic. Keywords Ireland · Neolithic · Pollen analysis · Non-pollen palynomorphs · Lake sediment geochemistry · Land-use change · Climate variability
Introduction County Sligo in northwestern Ireland (Fig. 1) is renowned for its abundance of archaeological sites dating to the Neolithic period (4000–2500 bc; Table 1). The Neolithic Communicated by M. O’Connell. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-020-00792-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Susann Stolze [email protected] 1
Department of Geology and Geological Engineering, Colorado School of Mines, 1516 Illinois Street, Golden, CO 80401, USA
2
Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado Boulder, 4001 Discovery Drive, Boulder, CO 80303, USA
3
Institute for Ecosystem Research, Kiel University, Olshausenstrasse 75, 24118 Kiel, Germany
represents an important period of societal, cultural, and technological development in Irish prehistory. It is characterised by the shift from a mobile to a more sedentary lifestyle, the introduction of agriculture, adoption of new technologies, and emergence of megalithic architecture (Waddell 2000). Important archaeological sites located in County Sligo include the causewayed enclosure at Magheraboy, which is regarded as the earliest Neolithic causewayed enclosure i
Data Loading...
