Pollen Analysis of Varved Sediment At Crawford Lake, Ontario: Evidence of Indian and European Farming [Chapter 7: Quaternary Environments in Canada As Documented By Paleobotanical Case Histories]

McAndrews, John H.

doi:10.4095/131577

Cited by 15 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Three of these sites (Hams Lake, Crawford Lake and Humber Pond 3) are located near the Niagara Peninsula, the fourth (Cranberry Lake) is on the northern shore of Lake Ontario and the fifth (Second Lake) is located on the southern shore of Georgian Bay (Figure 2). Crawford Lake and Second Lake, both previously believed to have been influenced by Native American agriculture (Burden et al, 1986;McAndrews and Boyko-Diakonow, 1989), are identified as having a highly significant (p=0.001) period of increased APFT values between 1195-1591 and 1446-1545 CE, respectively. The other three sites (Hams Lake, Humber Pond 3 and Cranberry Lake) have not been previously associated with prehistoric anthropogenic disturbance (Bennett, 1987;Weninger and McAndrews, 1989;McAndrews, unpublished data).…”

Section: Scan Statisticsmentioning

confidence: 94%

Distinguishing prehistoric human influence on late-Holocene forests in southern Ontario, Canada

Muñoz

Gajewski

2010

The Holocene

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The influence of Native Americans on late-Holocene forests of North America remains a contentious issue, as it is unclear whether vegetation transitions inferred from pollen records are a product of prehistoric human disturbance. In southern Ontario, the adoption of maize agriculture coincides with neoglacial cooling, so distinguishing the relative roles of prehistoric people and climatic change in shaping forest composition requires that pollen records be interpreted in a regional context. In this study, we objectively identify pollen records from the southern Ontario region which exhibit periods of significant pre-European anthropogenic disturbance in the context of the archeological record. This enables a comparison of pollen records shaped primarily by climatic cooling with those disturbed by prehistoric human forest clearance. Our results suggest that regional-scale late-Holocene cooling resulted in a gradual and synchronous shift from deciduous to boreal taxa. However, forest clearance by Native Americans resulted in a secondary succession characterized by the replacement of late-successional beech-maple forest with ruderal species, grasses and poplar, followed by mid-successional oak and white pine. This transition consistently coincides in space and time with an increase in archeological records of human occupation. The method we have developed here to distinguish significant prehistoric human impacts could be applied to pollen records in other regions, or on a continental scale.

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Section: Scan Statisticsmentioning

confidence: 94%

Distinguishing prehistoric human influence on late-Holocene forests in southern Ontario, Canada

Muñoz

Gajewski

2010

The Holocene

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“…Archaeological evidence, bone chemistry and ethnohistorical accounts indicate that agricultural products, particularly maize, constituted a significant portion of the Iroquoian diet, and that forest clearances were established around settlements and expanded until the settlement was relocated after a few decades (Heidenreich, 1971;Warrick, 2000;Kellner & Schoeninger, 2007). A palaeoecological record from Crawford Lake in southern Ontario found pollen from domesticates, including maize, sunflower and squash (Cucurbita pepo), together with evidence of forest clearance manifested as declines in beech (Fagus grandifolia) and sugar maple (Acer saccharum) over a period of c. 300 years beginning in the 14th century ad (McAndrews & Boyko-Diakonow, 1989), and subsequent archaeological excavations have revealed the presence of several contemporaneous Iroquoian villages within 5 km of Crawford Lake ( Fig. 5a; Finlayson, 1998).…”

Section: Agriculturementioning

confidence: 99%

Defining the spatial patterns of historical land use associated with the indigenous societies of eastern North America

Muñoz

Mladenoff

Schroeder

et al. 2014

Journal of Biogeography

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Aim To review and synthesize multiple lines of evidence that describe the spatial patterns of land use associated with prehistoric and early historical Native American societies in eastern North America in order to better characterize the type, spatial extent and temporal persistence of past land use.Location Temperate forests of eastern North America, and the Eastern Woodlands cultural region.Methods Ethnohistorical accounts, archaeological data, historical land surveys and palaeoecological records describing indigenous forms of silviculture and agriculture were evaluated across scales ranging from local (10 0 km) to regional (10 2 km) to produce a synthetic description of land-use characteristics.Results Indigenous land-use practices created patches of distinct ecological conditions within a heterogeneous mosaic of ecosystem types. At all scales, patch location was dynamic, and patches underwent recurrent periods of expansion, contraction and abandonment. Land-use patches varied in their extent and persistence, and are broadly categorized as silvicultural (management of undomesticated woodland taxa) or agricultural (cultivation of domesticated taxa). Silvicultural patches persisted for centuries and extended kilometres to tens of kilometres around settlements and travel corridors. The dynamics of agricultural patches varied among groups, with persistence ranging from decades to centuries and extent ranging from less than a kilometre to tens of kilometres around settlements. Beyond patch boundaries, human impacts on ecosystems become indistinguishable from other drivers of environmental heterogeneity. These characteristics of patches are evident across scales and multiple lines of evidence.Main conclusions Our findings challenge the view that prehistoric human impacts on vegetation were widespread and ubiquitous, and build on previous work showing these impacts to be more localized and heterogeneous by providing quantitative descriptions of land-use patch characteristics. Collaborative efforts that combine multiple data sources are needed to refine these descriptions and generate more precise measures of land-use pattern to further investigate the history of human impacts on the Earth system.

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“…At Crawford Lake, the rise in A. rubrum and J. nigra, and declines in A. saccharum and J. cinerea at the time of the Little Ice Age (McAndrews & Boyko-Diakonow 1989), suggest that these taxa might be responding to lower temperatures or to a wetter climate, or these changes may be a reflection of opportunistic capitalization on openings in the forest canopy. Canopy opening may be due to a long-term decline of Fagus (Gajewski 1987), a deep-shade-casting canopy dominant; A. rubrum is a better competitor than A. saccharum in gap conditions (Sipe & Bazzaz 1995).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improved resolution of pollen taxonomy allows better biogeographical interpretation of post‐glacial forest development: analyses from the North American Pollen Database

Finkelstein¹,

Gajewski

Viau

2005

Journal of Ecology

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Summary1 Species-level pollen identifications within the genera Acer , Fraxinus and Juglans have the potential to increase the detail available from regional-and landscape-scale studies of palaeo-forest dynamics. 2 Data from the North American Pollen Database (NAPD) and the North American Modern Pollen Database (NAMPD) for sites in eastern North America for which species-level identifications have been recorded enabled us to consider pollen taxonomy at high resolution. 3 Species within each of Acer , Fraxinus and Juglans have important differences in habitat, functional type and responses to climatic change. Analysis of the modern distribution of these taxa and their pollen rains confirms that species-level pollen identifications provide detailed ecological information, but the lack of distinction to the species level in many fossil and modern pollen studies renders palaeoenvironmental reconstructions incomplete. 4 Within each of three selected high-resolution sites, ordinations indicate that individual species of Acer , Fraxinus and Juglans follow different trajectories through the Holocene, showing that analysing only generic categories results in the loss of ecologically valuable information. For example, pollen of Acer rubrum increased in abundance in response to canopy openings in a southern Ontario forest around 500 years ago, while that of A. saccharum declined. Similarly, Juglans nigra pollen percentages increased while J. cinerea decreased at this time. 5 Regional-scale comparisons of pollen percentage curves indicate that, despite the uncertainties associated with the low temporal resolution and the chronologies, it is reasonable to conclude that individual species of Acer , Fraxinus and Juglans responded synchronously to palaeoclimatic changes within each region. 6 Taking analyses to the specific level shows that different species followed different tracks in their post-glacial history, a fact previously blurred by less resolved taxonomy. This information is meaningful in biogeographical terms, providing much more specific evidence of how the selected trees behaved in the past.

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Pollen Analysis of Varved Sediment At Crawford Lake, Ontario: Evidence of Indian and European Farming [Chapter 7: Quaternary Environments in Canada As Documented By Paleobotanical Case Histories]

Cited by 15 publications

References 0 publications

Distinguishing prehistoric human influence on late-Holocene forests in southern Ontario, Canada

Distinguishing prehistoric human influence on late-Holocene forests in southern Ontario, Canada

Defining the spatial patterns of historical land use associated with the indigenous societies of eastern North America

Improved resolution of pollen taxonomy allows better biogeographical interpretation of post‐glacial forest development: analyses from the North American Pollen Database

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