During the last three decades intense archaeological prospection has taken place in the region of Sandy Flanders (Belgium), which is now one of the most intensively surveyed areas of NW Europe. This has led to the production of archaeological distribution maps, which show a distinct pattern regarding the temporal and spatial distribution of these archaeological sites. Some areas with a presumed high ecological value seem to have been attractive settlement locations in Prehistory. Habitations however seem to have ‘moved’ in time, and the same areas became completely ‘empty’ during Protohistory and even the Roman Period. During the Late Glacial and Holocene the landscape in the Belgian area of Sandy Flanders was subjected to major changes due to climatic fluctuations, and besides human factors, environmental conditions may have influenced settlement conditions throughout time and played a role in this change in site location and the occupational history of the region. In this light an inter-disciplinary project ’Prehistoric settlement and land-use systems in Sandy Flanders (NW Belgium): a diachronic and geoarchaeological approach’ (GOA project, UGent), involving archaeology, geography, palaeoecology, sedimentology and geophysical survey, has been undertaken. The study of both ‘empty’ and densely inhabited areas is ongoing and aims at analyzing the settlement dynamics of the area of Sandy Flanders in terms of environmental potentials. Likewise, we seek to investigate the reasons why some areas, which were inhabited in previous periods, were apparently not attractive anymore from the Metal Ages onwards. Indeed, to determine the suitability of a certain land type for a certain activity, it is necessary to understand the different types of land use, the soil characteristics and the environment at different time intervals. We present here the first results of the palaeoecological (mainly palynology and NPPs, but also plant macroremains, charcoal, diatoms, ostracods, molluscs, beetles and Chironomideae) and sedimentological (water content, LOI, magnetic susceptibility, gamma-density) approaches, which have been undertaken on the site of the Moervaart Depressie, a shallow but large palaeolake first densely inhabited and then deserted. They provide new insights in the palaeolandscape evolution of this area during the Late Glacial and the early Holocene, and may allow us to evaluate in detail how and to which degree this evolution determined the pre- and protohistoric occupation and exploitation within Sandy Flanders. Furthermore, significant emphasis is placed on the impact of prehistoric populations on both local and regional landscapes.
Located in
Library
/
No RBINS Staff publications
It is now widely accepted that human impact has been the most important factor effecting vegetation change, at least in Europe, during the last 6000 years. With the onset of agriculture and stock breeding, at the so-called Neolithic revolution, the human role changed from a passive component to an active element which directly affects nature. This change had dramatic consequences for the natural environment and landscape development. During this important period of transition, arable and pastoral farming, the actual settlements themselves and the consequent changes in the economy significantly altered the natural vegetation and started to create the cultural landscape with its many different and varying aspects. Conversely, human settlements and economic activity throughout the Neolithic are often closely related to natural environments and their changes induced by climatic variability. In this context, and in order to better understand anthropogenic/natural processes interactions in lowland ecosystems, an integrated research based on a multi-proxies approach has recently been undertaken in Wallonia (SE Belgium) within the framework of a convention between the “Service Public de Wallonie” and the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, which aims at investigating the archaeological sites of the area in terms of palaeoenvironmental potentials. As a part of the archaeobotanical studies of this broader research, we present here the results of palynological analyses (pollen, NPPs, micro-charcoal) realised at two Middle Belgian sites: an Early Neolithic village (Belgian LBK) with two occupation phases (Fehxe-le-Haut-Cloché), and a Middle-Late Neolithic flint mines areaof around one hundred hectares exploited for more than 1 800 years (Spiennes). The purposes of this work are (1) to reconstruct the vegetation around each site and its evolution between the different occupation phases, (2) to elucidate human action on the vegetation history and questions relating to the vegetal economy during the Neolithic, and (3) to try to characterize local settlement dynamics, nature and function of different structure types, and specialized activities such as animal husbandry, cultures, waste management or mining. Our data represent the first “non-pollen palynomorphs” (NPPs) records in Wallonia and accent will be made here on these new biological indicators. In recent years the demand for more comprehensive past climatic and environmental reconstructions has stimulated the expansion of this new set of complementary microfossils. It is a broad group representing a wide variety of micro-remains of bacteria, protozoa, fungi, invertebrates, testate amoeba, algae and higher plant remains, which are encountered (but frequently ignored) during standard pollen analysis. They provide complementary insight into climate and/or human-driven processes, as well as vegetation shifts, even where pollen is scarce or absent (which is often the case in sediments from archaeological sites). If the value of NPPs as paleoenvironmental indicators has now been demonstrated, their identification (up to now more than one thousand NPPs have been described!) is still progressing and more and more studies are needed to improve our knowledge about their ecology and representativeness.
Located in
Library
/
RBINS Staff Publications
