Late Holocene history of woodland dynamics and wood use in an ancient mining area of the Pyrenees (Ariège, France) Vanessa Py, Raquel Cunill Artigas, Jean-Paul Métailié, Bruno Ancel, Sandrine Baron, Sandrine Paradis-Grenouillet, Emilie Lerigoleur, Nassima Badache, Hugues Barcet, Didier Galop To cite this version: Vanessa Py, Raquel Cunill Artigas, Jean-Paul Métailié, Bruno Ancel, Sandrine Baron, et al.. Late Holocene history of woodland dynamics and wood use in an ancient mining area of the Pyrenees (Ariège, France). Quaternary International, Elsevier, 2017, 458, pp.141 - 157. 10.1016/j.quaint.2017.01.012. hal-01760722 HAL Id: hal-01760722 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01760722 Submitted on 14 Sep 2018 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Quaternary International 458 (2017) 141e157 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Quaternary International journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/quaint Late Holocene history of woodland dynamics and wood use in an ancient mining area of the Pyrenees (Ariege, France) * Vanessa Py-Saragaglia a, , Raquel Cunill Artigas a, Jean-Paul Metaili e a, Bruno Ancel b, c, b d, e a Sandrine Baron , Sandrine Paradis-Grenouillet , Emilie Lerigoleur , Nassima Badache a, Hugues Barcet a, Didier Galop a a GEODE, LABEX DRIIHM, UMR5602 CNRS Universite Toulouse Jean Jaures, Maison de la Recherche, 5 allees Antonio Machado, 31058 Toulouse Cedex 1, France b TRACES, UMR 5608 CNRS Universite Toulouse Jean Jaures, Maison de la Recherche, 5 allees Antonio Machado, 31058 Toulouse Cedex 1, France c Service Culturel Municipal de L'Argentiere-La Bessee, Mairie de L'Argentiere, 05120 L'Argentiere-La Bessee, France d GEOLAB, UMR 6042, Universite de Limoges, Site de Limoges, 39E rue Camille Guerin 87036 Limoges Cedex, France e Dipartimento di Beni Culturali: Archeologia, Storia dell'Arte, del Cinema e della Musica, Padova University, Piazza Capitaniato 7, Padova, Italy article info abstract Article history: This paper focuses on past woodland changes and land uses in an ancient mining area of the Eastern Received 15 July 2016 Pyrenees (Ariege, France). The area discussed is located at the western entrance of the Vicdessos, a valley Received in revised form with significant steel production, and it is crossed by the road used from the 14th c. to the end of the 18th 8 December 2016 c. for the iron-charcoal exchange with the forest Province of Couserans. The introduction of this singular Accepted 8 January 2017 exchange and the silver ore mining history of this border area raise the question of their impact on forest Available online 1 March 2017 cover changes and changes in human practices and their link with anthropisation processes. To deal with this issue, we put in place an interdisciplinary approach involving archaeology, charcoal analysis, Keywords: Mining ecological history and geochemistry. The archaeological investigations and fourteen radiocarbon ages Charcoal kilns allowed characterising and dating of mining and charcoal-making remains. They situate the emergence Charcoal analysis of metal ore mining during the Second Iron Age and charcoal making activity between the 15th and 17th Woodland changes c. The geochemical analysis of 9 galena samples showed some different isotopic signatures between ores Late Holocene extracted in ancient times and those mined during the modern period. The charcoal analysis of (i) 2442 Eastern Pyrenees charcoals from 31 charcoal kilns (ii) 500 from one pedoarchaeological pit excavated in a waste heap related to firesetting, and (iii) 250 from two pedoanthracological sampling points carried out in the charcoal burning forest, permits a detailed reconstruction of the woodland cover changes from the Second Iron Age to the 19th c. Furthermore, the combination of data from different disciplines allows for a long-term reconstruction of human practices history and woodland management for different uses. In particular, the results show the transformation of the fir-beech forest, still dominated by fir around the turn of the Roman era, into pure beech wood managed on northern slopes for human daily needs, oc- casionally mining, lumber and mainly charcoal production until the 19th c. The elimination of fir dates back to the 17th c. This assumes the end of lumber activities in that period. Pedoanthracological and palynological data suggest that southern slopes, progressively deforested since the Bronze Age, were entirely devoted to permanent agropastoral activities probably at least since the end of the medieval period. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction exerted a strong pressure on woodland cover and contributed significantly to environmental changes (Monna et al., 2004a; In the past, mining and ore processing activities in Europe Breitenlechner et al., 2010; Pelachs et al., 2009; Ludemann, 2010; Knapp, 2012; Roepke and Krause, 2013; Py et al., 2014; Knapp et al., 2015; Tolksdorf et al., 2015). In the 80e90s, several studies * Corresponding author. carried out in the Eastern Pyrenees (southwestern France) and E-mail address: [email protected] (V. Py-Saragaglia). focused on charcoal making activity showed the importance of this http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2017.01.012 1040-6182/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. 142 V. Py-Saragaglia et al. / Quaternary International 458 (2017) 141e157 phenomenon (Bonhote^ and Vernet, 1988; Metaili e et al., 1988; hydraulic force seems to have been responsible for the first forest Bonhote^ and Fruhauf, 1990; Izard, 1993; Davasse and Galop, 1994; crisis, as is suggested by certain texts from the 14th c. (Verna, 2001). Davasse, 2000; Bonhote^ et al., 2002). However, with some excep- But, in our study area, it seems as though it worked to the contrary. tions (Dubois and Metaili e, 2001), the data obtained for several In AD 1347e1348, an exchange treaty, sealing the fate of both these valleys remained partial and disparate, particularly for periods mining regions, consisted in an agreement to exchange iron from prior to the 17th c. The most efficient way to understand the Vicdessos mines against charcoal from Couserans forests in order to different anthropogenic factors affecting an ancient mining terri- safeguard wood resources of the former and to promote the tory is to utilise a global and integrated approach as it was suc- development of the steel industry for the latter. But the real long- cessfully done in the Basque Country (Galop et al., 2001; Monna term implication of this treaty on Couserans' forest history and et al., 2004b), Mont-Lozere (Servera Vives et al., 2014; Bal et al., evolution is not well known and historical documentation prior to 2015; Paradis-Grenouillet et al., 2015) and Harz Mountains the 19th c. is sparse (Davasse, 2000). In addition, the paleoenvir- (Knapp et al., 2013). Our present study is a continuation of the onmental studies that have been published on the subject are old research conducted in the Eastern Pyrenees in the goal of deep- and rare (Kenla, 1977; Kenla and Jalut, 1979; Reille, 1993). More ening our knowledge of two areas with fragile mountainous eco- recently, a palynological study of a peat core included in our study systems, which are particularly vulnerable to the effects of global area (Galop, 1998; see Fig. 2 for the coring site location), but this change: the Upper Vicdessos and Couserans (Fig. 1). The first site sequence covers all the post-glacial period and its upper part is contained rich iron ore deposits that were the subject of an consequently compressed and does not provide sufficient temporal important mining activity in the Rancie Massif from the Roman era resolution to determine the accurate anthropisation processes such (AD 3e5th c.) to the beginning of the last century (Dubois and as mining, which were contemporary with historical periods. fi Metaili e, 2001; Dubois, 2001). The second area, located in the Consequently, this small area has focused our attention on the rst fi neighbouring Province of Couserans and called Aulus Mountain part of our study, whose rst results are reported here. Its history, (Upper Garbet Valley), hosted an important silver mining district. In closely tied to mining activities, raises the question of their impact both of these areas, texts from the 14th c. suggest that mining and on forest cover changes, human practices and anthropisation pro- ore processing activities generated a significant consumption of cesses. In addition, we aim to characterise the implication of the ’ wood, which has increased with the emergence of the mouline iron-charcoal treaty on Couserans forest history and evolution, in technology starting in the late 13th c. (Verna, 1994, 2001, 2008; particular in our study area. In the context of the Human- Leroy et al., 2012). For historians, this kind of bloomery using Environment observatory Pyrenees-Vicdessos (Labex DRIIHM), we Fig. 1. National and regional location map of the study area discussed in this paper. V. Py-Saragaglia et al. / Quaternary International 458 (2017) 141e157 143 Fig. 2. Detail sampling points (ores and charcoals from soil and mining remains) and archaeological remains locations with both mining sectors (Les Argentiere and Lacore) and charcoal kilns. put in place an interdisciplinary approach involving archaeology, mineralisations were remobilised in fractures during the Hercynian charcoal analysis, ecological history and geochemistry, in order to folding and the simultaneous rise of a granite massif. The Pyrenean answer these issues and (i) to characterise and date the archaeo- orogeny might have contributed to the geological and metallogenic logical remains of mining and charcoal-making; (ii) to determine complexity of this area.