UDK 903(497.4)"634":56 Documenta Praehistorica XXVIII The Holocene vegetation dynamics and the formation of Neolithic and present-day Slovenian landscape Maja Andri≠ School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford University, UK
[email protected] and Department of Archaeology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
[email protected] ABSTRACT *– This paper presents the results of palaeoecological research to investigate the Holocene vegetation development of the Slovenian landscape and the impact of the first farmers upon it. Four study sites were selected and at each site a complete Holocene sedimentary sequence was analysed by using the following techniques: loss-on-ignition, geochemistry, radiocarbon dating, pollen analysis and analysis of micro-charcoal concentration. The results of the study suggest that the Neolithic land- scape was probably very dynamic and composed of small patches with different vegetation composi- tion. This vegetation has no present-day analogues. The present-day Slovenian landscape formed only several millennia after the transition to farming. IZVLE∞EK** – V ≠lanku so predstavljeni rezultati paleoekolo∏ke raziskave, katere cilj je bil ugotoviti, kak∏en je bil razvoj slovenske pokrajine in vegetacije v holocenu in kak∏en je bil vpliv prvih kmeto- valcev na okolje. Na ∏tirih izbranih paleoekolo∏kih najdi∏≠ih so bile izvedene slede≠e analize: “loss- on-ignition”, geokemi≠na analiza, radiokarbonsko datiranje sedimenta, pelodna analiza in analiza koncentracije mikrooglja. Rezultati raziskave ka∫ejo, da je bila neolitska pokrajina verjetno zelo di- nami≠na in mozai≠na – sestavljena iz obmo≠ij z razli≠no vegetacijo. Ta vegetacija nima sodobnih analogij. Dana∏nja slovenska pokrajina je nastala kasneje, ve≠ tiso≠letij po prehodu na kmetovanje.