University of Groningen Reconstructing Vegetation Diversity
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
University of Groningen Reconstructing vegetation diversity in coastal landscapes Schepers, Mans IMPORTANT NOTE: You are advised to consult the publisher's version (publisher's PDF) if you wish to cite from it. Please check the document version below. Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Publication date: 2014 Link to publication in University of Groningen/UMCG research database Citation for published version (APA): Schepers, M. (2014). Reconstructing vegetation diversity in coastal landscapes. s.n. Copyright Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). The publication may also be distributed here under the terms of Article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright Act, indicated by the “Taverne” license. More information can be found on the University of Groningen website: https://www.rug.nl/library/open-access/self-archiving-pure/taverne- amendment. Take-down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Downloaded from the University of Groningen/UMCG research database (Pure): http://www.rug.nl/research/portal. For technical reasons the number of authors shown on this cover page is limited to 10 maximum. Download date: 05-10-2021 This thesis will be published as a volume in the series Advances in Archaeobotany. English text editing SuzanneNeeds-Howarth,Toronto AnnetteHansen,GIA,Groningen Book and cover design ChristineKlein,Bremen www.christineklein.nl Photos MansSchepers,RenéCappersandIngerWoltinge Production RoelfBarkhuis www.barkhuis.nl StichtingNederlandsMuseumvoor Financial support AnthropologieenPraehistorie S•N•M•A•POL.indd 1 3/28/12 4:04:30 PM © 2014 Mans Schepers Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproducedortransmittedinanyform orbyanymeans,electronicormechanical,includingphotocopying,recording,orbyany informationstorageorretrievalsystem,withoutpermissioninwrittenformfromtheauthor. ISBN (dissertation edition) 978-90-367-6975-4 ISBN (digital edition) 978-90-367-6974-7 Aan Nicolien Bottema Mac-Gillavry en Henk Woldring Voor het wijzen van planten en het planten van wijsheid Opdat die ooit bloeien moge… Contents Chapter1 General introduction 009 Chapter2 An objective method based on assemblages of subfossil plant 029 macro-remains to reconstruct past natural vegetation: a case study at Swifterbant, The Netherlands Box1 A pure sample 061 Chapter3 Wet, wealthy worlds: The environment of the Swifterbant river 073 system during the Neolithic occupation (4300–4000 cal BC) Box2 Why sample ditches? 109 Chapter4 Dung Matters: An experimental study into the effectiveness 123 of using dung from hay fed livestock to reconstruct local veg- etation Chapter5 A review of prehistoric and early historic mainland salt marsh 159 vegetation in the northern-Netherlands based on the analysis of plant macrofossils Chapter6 General discussion 195 References 219 Samenvatting 243 Dankwoord 253 List of publications 259 Affiliation of co-authors 261 Chapter 1 009 General introduction People and vegetation Reconstructing vegetation is far from a walk in the park ‒ yet it is a prerequisite for a fuller understand- ing of past human behaviour in all its aspects. The exploitation of the landscape is not restricted to the direct use of plants. It is the grass we will not let grow under our feet, the forest we can- not see for the trees, and the nettle we are willing to grasp. To reduce vegetation to the berries we chew, the meadows we graze our livestock on, and the oaks we fell to support our roofs is an anthropocentric simplification of the complicated interaction between humans and their environment. This relationship is relevant to, and has been studied from, a variety of perspectives, both historical and contemporary (Sukopp 1969). Traditionally, archaeological studies (and archaeolo- gists) have split into two camps. On the one hand, there are the so-called ‘specialist studies’, such as ceramic analysis, lithic analysis, and zooarchaeological analysis. On the other hand, 0010 there are the more general studies, in which various aspects of one period are brought together. In this tradition, the study of past vegetation would be regarded as a specialist palaeobo- tanical (also known as archaeobotanical) study. However, the relevance of the natural environment for understanding hu- man behaviour has long been acknowledged by more generalist archaeologists, in some cases as a result of the archaeologist’s background in biology or physical geography (two Dutch exam- ples are Louwe Kooijmans [1974, 1985] and Waterbolk [1954]). Two main research questions underlie this study, of which the first governs the second: Is it possible to improve upon the reconstruction of past vegetation at the most detailed level? To answer this first research question, several approaches are adopted. First, the potential of applying both recent and long-established methodology and data from present-day vege- tation ecology to archaeobotanical data is explored. Modern ecological field studies are an essential element for the inter- pretation of the archaeobotanical record (Butzer 1982, 171–172). Second, the relationship between some frequently studied types of archaeological contexts and their botanical composi- tion (as opposed to standing vegetation) is studied in detail. It is alleged that it is possible to successfully address past vegeta- tion composition by seeking novelty in the analysis, rather than by seeking new proxies (stage 5 rather than 4 in Fig. 1.5). In this study, the emphasis lies on the reconstruction of vegetation in wetland environments where an open coast profoundly influ- enced landscape dynamics. The second research question follows directly from the first: Does a more detailed reconstruction of vegetation enable us to expand our understanding of past human interaction with the landscape? To explore this, new approaches are applied to two coastal wetland areas in the northern Netherlands, where several botanical and geological studies dealing with land- scape and vegetation have been carried out previously by oth- er researchers. These areas, the Swifterbant river system and the terp region, are the subjects of major lines of research by the Groningen Institute of Archaeology. Having already been studied intensively, these two regions combine the challenge of Chapter1 011 being able to add original results and ideas with the benefit of a substantial corpus of available data. Both new primary data and previously published data are used, thus making internal reports and reports resulting from Dutch commercial archaeol- ogy accessible to the international community. Theory OF vegetation reconstruction In order to be able to ad- dress the difficulties we encounter when dealing with the recon- struction of past vegetation, it is essential that we define what vegetation actually is and how it differs from a list of (quantified) taxa, as typically results from archaeobotanical analysis. The difference between raw archaeobotanical data and past vegeta- tion is analogous to the difference between the terms ‘flora’ and ‘vegetation’. The primary difference lies in the spatial compo- nent. The flora of a certain area is a list of taxa encountered in a certain area. While walking through this area, one would notice that these plants are not randomly distributed; they are, in stead, grouped in a systematic way (Meltzer and Westhoff 1942, 17). Vegetation is the spatial distribution and coverage ratio among the taxa of a flora. Whereas flora is thus a rather abstract concept, vegetation is the factual spatial manifestation of plants, high or low, open or dense, that one can actually walk through (Cappers and Neef 2012, 93; Westhoff et al. 1995, 15). Archaeobotanical data, which are basically a list of identified (quantified) plant taxa, can be considered an incomplete past flora. The complex relationship between archaeobotanical sam- ples and vegetation is visualized in Figure 1.1. A number of major differences exist between taxon lists (at whatever taxonomic level) and reconstructed vegetation. First, the axes of the matrix summarizing the results differ, and so do the units of measurements in which these are expressed. Whereas vegetation is mostly expressed in ‘coverage’ per de- fined surface area (‘relevé’), archaeobotanical data are ex- pressed in ‘number of remains’ per sample. Number of remains is the most common form, but alternatives do exist (e.g. categories of number of remains, presence/absence). In addition, synoptic tables of vegetation descriptions can be designed in various ways (Schaminée et al. 1995b). 012 Figure 1.1 Diagramshowingthethreestepsthatmaybeusedtotransformthecompositionof archaeobotanicalsamplesintovegetation Taxon lists already differ from past flora at the qualitative level. This difference primarily concerns taxa that are present in the past vegetation but are lacking in the archaeobotanical archive. The cause may be differences in seed production, seed dispersal, and preservation conditions, or the fact that some taxa are hard to distinguish at a lower taxonomic level.