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The results from analyses of botanical remains (pollen, wood, charcoal, seeds) from several archaeological features excavated in Kluizen (northern Belgium) are presented. The region was largely uninhabited until the Iron Age and Roman period when a rural settlement was established, resulting in small-scale woodland clearance. The site was subsequently abandoned from c. AD 270 till the High Middle Ages. The results of the archaeological and archaeobotanical analyses provide information on changes in land use and resulting dynamics of woodland cover and composition between c.600 BC and AD 1200, with a spatial and temporal resolution unrivalled in northern Belgium. Especially the long period of woodland regeneration following abandonment of the site around AD 270, covering the Late Roman and Early Medieval period, could be reconstructed in detail. Abandoned fields were first covered with pioneer woodland (Salix, Corylus and Betula), then Quercus-dominated secondary forest and finally a late-successional forest with Fagus sylvatica, Carpinus betulus and Ilex aquifolium, an evolution that took over 300 years. The results also indicate that the observed increase of Fagus during the Early Middle Ages, which was never an important element in the woodland vegetation in northern Belgium before, was related to climatic changes rather than anthropogenic factors.

This paper assesses the application of a consumer-grade unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) solution for the imagebased three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction of a buried Medieval landscape at Monnikerede, a deserted former outport of Bruges, with the archaeological aim to achieve a better characterization of the (micro)topography and ultimately a better understanding of the site. The UAV survey resulted in a highly detailed and accurate 3D model of the terrain, allowing a thorough topographic analysis of the complex archaeological landscape. Application of algorithms to produce an enhanced visualization of the topographic variability led to a sequence of derivatives each highlighting the topography in a different way. Additionally a decorrelation stretch was applied on the collected imagery, thereby generating enhanced orthophotos producing another view on the archaeological landscape. Integrating the (enhanced) orthophoto(s) with the digital surface model (DSM) and derivatives to conduct a thorough analysis of the archaeological landscape resulted in the detection and identification of new archaeological features and the formulation of new insights in the layout of this important Medieval outport. ResultsDespite the slightly irregular flight pattern and flight altitude (both a result of the manual control of the UAV), we were able to generate a highly detailed 338 J. De Reu et al.