Cut and covered: Subfossil trees in buried soils reflect medieval forest composition and exploitation of the central European uplands

Abstract

Knowledge of historic changes in vegetation, relief, and soil is key in understanding how the uplands in central Europe have changed during the last millennium, being an essential requirement for measures on forest conversion and nature conservation in that area. Evidence of forest‐clearing horizons from the medieval period could be systematically documented at four low‐ to mid‐altitudinal sites (360–640 meters above mean sea level) in the Harz (Harz Mountains), Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains), and Českomoravská vrchovina (Bohemian‐Moravian Highlands). Subfossil trees with traces of human cutmarks and burning were recovered from buried wet‐organic soils (paleosols) within a context of mining and settlement archaeology, applying a multiproxy‐approach by using data from archaeology, paleobotany, geochronology, dendrochronology, and pedology. Tree stumps and trunks, as well as small‐scale wood remains represent an in situ record of local conifer stands (spruce, fir, and pine). Some deciduous tree taxa also occur. Dating of the tree remains yielded ages from the 10th/11th to the 13th/14th centuries A.D. After deforestation, the tree remains were buried by technogenic and alluvial–colluvial deposits. The reconstructed conifer‐dominated woodlands on wet soils mirror the local vegetation structure immediately before the medieval deforestation. As such wet sites are common in the uplands, conifers were significantly present in the natural vegetation even at mid and lower altitudes.

Colluvial sediments originating from past land-use activities in the Erzgebirge Mountains, Central Europe: occurrence, properties, and historic environmental implications

“…The pollen data available from the sites and from further records at Erzgebirge (e.g. Stebich and Litt 1997;Seifert-Eulen 2016;Houfková et al 2019;Kaiser et al 2020) reveal a drastic decline of the mountain forests in the late twelfth to fifteenth centuries AD period. Even where forest-like structures ("woodlands") have been preserved after incomplete cutting of trees, the wood species proportions changed largely (e.g.…”

“…to exclude and to include colluvial records for this study. This border line even roughly marks in the Erzgebirge Mountains the lower-closed natural (past) occurrences of spruce and fir (Hempel 2009;Kaiser et al 2020) as well as the lower limit of the high medieval colonisation (Kenzler 2009), both likewise representing regional "mountain attributes". Also, further vegetation (change from colline hornbeam/beech-oak to sub-montane oak-beech forests) and climatic properties (decrease of summer temperature, increase of precipitation) markedly change in the altitude interval 300-400 m a.s.l.…”

Buried Podzols as a pedostratigraphic marker for the Medieval Climatic Optimum: Grębociny soil in the dune deposits of the European Sand Belt

“…The need for settlement and arable areas led to the most extensive clearing of central European forests up to that time (Williams, 2000). The record of these clearances in various sedimentary and dendrochronological geoarchives is an important field of Medieval environmental history studies (Kaiser et al, 2019(Kaiser et al, , 2021.…”

Archeologický výzkum rýžoviště v Nové Vésce (místní část obce Staré Město, okres Bruntál)

“…Rýžování v povodí Černého potoka a jeho přítoků vstoupilo do krajiny, která nebyla narušena člověkem. Podobná situace je dokumentována na několika místech v Krušných horách (Kočár et al 2018, 49-61;Tolksdorf et al 2018), ale například na Českomoravské vrchovině na některých hornických lokalitách předcházela těžbě fáze zemědělské, nebo minimálně pastevecké kolonizace, dokumentované například na lokalitě Cvilínek (Hrubý et al 2012;Kaiser et al 2020). Pylové spektrum i spektrum rostlinných makrozbytků ukazuje převahu lesní vegetace na zkoumaných lokalitách.…”

“…Doposud nedošlo k masivnímu a plošnému odlesnění okolní krajiny nebo zásadní změně druhového složení lesní vegetace. Údolní niva byla pokrytá převážně smrkem (Picea), to je důvodem jeho nadhodnocení v lokálním palynologickém a makrozbytkovém záznamu (Hájková et al 2019;Kaiser et al 2020) vůči okolní lesní vegetaci (Dudová et al 2018), kde převažovaly jedle (Abies) a buk (Fagus). Středověké odlesnění vedoucí ke vzniku dnešní převážně lesů prosté krajiny je často líčeno jako rychlý frontální proces.…”