Investigating Neolithic land use in Swifterbant (NL) using micromorphological techniques

Huisman, D.J.; Jongmans, A.G.; Raemaekers, D.C.M.

doi:10.1016/j.catena.2009.03.006

Cited by 37 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Rapp & Hill 2006;Hill 2007a;Gillmore & Melton) and micromorphology thin sections (e.g. French 2003;Guttmann et al 2006Guttmann et al , 2008Simpson et al 2006;Huisman et al 2009;Sageidet 2009). Others range in scale up to examinations of entire regions over long time periods (e.g.…”

Section: What Is Geoarchaeology?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of geoarchaeology in extending our perspective

Wilson

2011

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Specialists and the general public alike are very aware of human impacts on our environment. Climate change, deforestation, desertification, soil erosion and other topics are currently much in the news, but human influence on the environment is not a new phenomenon. Geoarchaeologists study the traces of human interactions with the geosphere dating back to ancient times, as well as up to and in the present. Geoarchaeological investigations provide the key to recognizing landscape and environmental change within a region, as well as reconstructing ancient landscapes and palaeoclimatic regimes. Such an interdisciplinary approach makes it possible to interpret the ways that humans affect the geosphere, through such things as subsistence and resource exploitation activities, settlement location, and local and regional land-use patterns. This approach also allows us to determine the effects of environmental change on human societies. For millennia, humans have been coping with, or provoking, environmental change. We have exploited, extracted, over-used but also in many cases nurtured the resources that the geosphere offers. In the geoarchaeological perspective, human life has never been separate from nature. Geoarchaeology can thus provide a more inclusive and longer-term view of human-geosphere interactions, and serve as a valuable aid to those who try to determine sustainable policies for the future.The world seems to be changing: the weather is messed up, climate is different, sea level is rising, glaciers are melting, new plants and animals are showing up in places where they never used to be . . . A lot of people are worried. They feel as if we are in uncharted waters. For many people, there is an underlying assumption that the environment is 'supposed to be' stable. The mere fact of it changing is frightening. They feel that we have never had to deal with such changes before, and they do not know how we will be able to handle it.This perspective is understandable, as what most people know of the world is based on their own experiences, with a smattering of history tacked on. Our own experiences are naturally very limited, no more than one lifetime (plus what our parents and grandparents tell us). The perspective that history can provide is not much better. History, which depends on written documents, is in fact very short: at best no more than a few thousand years, and most of that very sketchy. For the most part we have only a few snippets of information about any one time, not an overall view. In addition, if we want to learn about the environment, historical documents tend to focus on the wrong details. They tell us about kings and wars and trade amounts, and they give us only the part of the story that one small subset of participants wanted to tell. We have to work hard to extract information about the environment from such sources.History also has the drawback of having taken place during relatively recent times, when climate was in fact fairly stable. The little information that it does give us ...

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Section: What Is Geoarchaeology?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of geoarchaeology in extending our perspective

Wilson

2011

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“…onwards [5-8, 11, 12]. Presence of cereal fields at the Swifterbant S2, S3 and S4 sites has been corroborated from micromorphological studies of soil samples [12]. Nevertheless, Swifterbant sites with evidence for cultivated plants are still scarce.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our study material comes from the site of Swifterbant S4 (Swifterbant Culture as the first farming groups in the area) [2,3,5,6,11,12,20,21]. During the Late Pleistocene the site was located deep in the heart of the continent several hundred kms away from the seashore southeast of the Doggerland Peninsula, which occupied the North Sea at the time [22].…”

Section: Regional Settingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The site extensively studied and excavated by Daan C. M. Raemaekers exposes a multilayered profile of paleosols, embedding pocket-like structures highly resembling toolmarks left by digging sticks ( structures marked by arrows) [5,6,12]. The mere presence of these structures raised several issues regarding the prehistory of the site, important from the point of paleoenvironmental and geoarcheological research as well.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…So if our study area was once under cultivation, then we may be able to find and identify these remains of the plants cultivated in the referred structures. Consequently, our aim was to attest plant cultivation at the site on the basis of the study of phytoliths, independently from the findings of other studies of macrobotanical remains and soil micro-morphology [5,6,12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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