The Elm Decline is Dead! Long Live Declines in Elm: Revisiting the Chronology of the Elm Decline in Ireland and its Association with the Mesolithic/Neolithic Transition

A multi-proxy Holocene palaeoenvironmental record of climate change and prehistoric human activity from Lough Cullin, southeast Ireland

“…The fluctuations in the geochemical data, LoI and MS are distinct, if not as pronounced as in LC-2, indicating the decline in elm was coeval with disturbance to local soils and inwash of minerogenic matter into the Lough. Other Irish records (Ghilardi and O’Connell, 2013b; Kearney and Gearey, 2020; McClatchie and Potito, 2020; Molloy et al, 2014; O’Connell and Molloy, 2001), also indicate a ‘gap’ between the ‘Elm Decline’ and clear palynological evidence for human disturbance. Overall, this may refute an anthropogenic cause for the reduction in elm, although the chronological disparity could also reflect increased stimulation of arboreal pollen production resulting from openings to the woodland canopy (cf.…”

“…A particular methodological issue concerns the production of tightly constrained chronologies that are now available for the archaeological record (Cooney et al, 2011; McClatchie et al, 2014; McLaughlin et al, 2016) and the utility of formal modelling procedures to generate robust estimates of the tempo of environmental changes such as those around the mid-Holocene ‘elm decline’ (e.g. Kearney and Gearey, 2020; Whitehouse et al, 2014) and the Bronze Age to Iron Age transition (e.g. Gearey et al, 2020).…”

Testing the presence of cereal-type pollen grains in coastal pre-Elm Decline peat deposits: Fine-resolution palynology at Roudsea Wood, Cumbria, UK

“…Birks' pollen analyses at Roudsea Wood covered the Mid-Holocene period leading up to and including the Ulmus Decline, which was estimated to occur around 5400 radiocarbon bp (4300-4200 cal BP), early but not remarkably so as there are similar early Elm Decline dates from elsewhere in northern England (Bartley et al, 1976). As noted above, Kearney and Gearey (2020) point out that the Elm Decline was often a multi-phase event with an early, primary fall, as also noted by Tipping (1994) at Williamson's Moss on the southwestern Cumbrian coast. Dates for the Elm Decline might well depend on which phase of the event is being dated, with the feature covering a couple of centuries, as elsewhere in northern England (Griffiths and Gearey, 2017).…”

“…BP) is a major marker horizon on pollen diagrams in the British Isles and northwest Europe. It was multi-causal (Parker et al, 2002), with disease and climate possible factors (Tipping, 2010), and not a single event (Kearney and Gearey, 2020;Tipping 1995) but it is conventionally held (Bonsall et al, 2002;Kearney and Gearey, 2020;Whittle et al, 2011;Whittle and Cummings, 2007) to have occurred within the early Neolithic cultural period because of its age range and the presence of cereal and other agrarian indicators (Behre, 1981) in its pollen assemblage. By the time of the 'traditional' Elm Decline at around 5900 cal.…”

“…BP in the southern Cumbrian region, which is the study area of this paper, an early farming economy (Richards et al, 2003;Schulting et al, 2004) had become established (Grosvenor et al, 2017;Pennington, 1970Pennington, , 1997. Large grass pollen grains of cereal size (above 38 μm) and morphology (Andersen, 1979;Joly et al, 2007;Köhler and Lange, 1979;Küster, 1988;Tweddle et al, 2005) are not always recorded in Elm Decline assemblages (Kearney and Gearey, 2020) but those which do occur, both at and after the Elm Decline, can be considered of secure Neolithic age and so have often been routinely assumed to be indicative of actual cereal cultivation, although probably local and at small scale (e.g. Edwards, 1993;Ghilardi and O'Connell, 2013;Göransson, 1986;O'Connell et al, 2014).…”