Palynology and the study of the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in the British Isles

Abstract

The transition from Mesolithic hunter-gatherers to Neolithic agriculturalists was one of the most important turning points in human history. The economic base, material culture, population levels, settlement patterns and world-views were transformed, along with significant changes in the ways in which people interacted with the landscape, including impacts upon the vegetation cover. The rate and process by which Mesolithic economies and societies were replaced by Neolithic ones in Britain's mid-Holocene forested landscape is difficult to discover by archaeological methods, unless it involved the rapid immigration of high numbers of fully-Neolithic farmers. Before the transformation was completed and Neolithic societies were established everywhere, there could well have been an extended period of time during which early settlers introduced domesticated animals and other elements of Neolithic-style economy and land use. Mesolithic groups could well have co-existed with these pioneer agro-pastoralists and continued with their foraging strategies as the transition progressed, until finally supplanted. Such early agriculturalists might be hardly visible in the archaeological record, but as vegetation is a sensitive indicator of environmental change, the introduction of new land-use techniques and their impacts should be discernable in the pollen and spore record. In this paper we examine the ways in which palynology has been used in Britain to investigate the transition from forager to farmer, illustrated by examples from three sites in NorthEast Yorkshire. Palynological methodologies and problems are evaluated. Evidence suggests that late Mesolithic people were using fire to manipulate woodland and improve its food resources. The cultivation of cereals might have been an early agricultural introduction. There was a phase of forest farming in the later transition in which the woodland was managed and utilized rather than opened significantly. Woodland clearance and more intensive farming occur after the transition was completed.

Lateglacial to Mid-Holocene Vegetation History in the Eastern Vale of Pickering, Northeast Yorkshire, UK: Pollen Diagrams from Palaeolake Flixton

“…It is possible that pioneer Neolithic agriculturalists were operating in the area in the centuries preceding the Ulmus Decline, as has been postulated for elsewhere in the area [106] at a time early in the transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic, but no signs of very early Neolithic-type land use have been found in the eastern Vale of Pickering. More focused, high-resolution palynology [107,108] would be required in late pre-Ulmus Decline peat, as occurs at profile AK87, to look for such evidence.…”

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

“…The respective impacts of the late Mesolithic and the earliest Neolithic on the landscape might have been of a similar scale and difficult to distinguish, but a means of detecting the initial Neolithic might be through changes in human ecology and vegetation disturbance which, although probably subtle and spatially restricted, altered ecosystems (Welinder, 1983) and vegetation patterns (Caseldine and Fyfe, 2006; Woodbridge et al, 2014). Although methodological problems remain, palynological data (Edwards, 1988; Innes and Blackford, 2009, 2017) can potentially provide evidence for the start and nature of these vegetational and palaeoecological changes and it might be possible to interpret early Neolithic pollen data not only in terms of vegetation change at the site scale, but to extend that understanding to the landscape scale and so spatially link the pollen and archaeological records (Farrell et al, 2020).…”

From the Wild to the City: How Domestication and Urbanization Reshape Animal Gut Microbiome

“…However, the development of agriculture in the Neolithic period brought about major changes in economic base, material culture, settlement patterns, and population levels (Dabrowski & Haynor, 2017). This transition was accompanied by the domestication of animals, which played a crucial role in agricultural practices (Innes & Blackford, 2017). As societies became more sedentary and agricultural practices intensified, the process of urbanization began to emerge (Alday et al, 2018).…”