Long–term history of woodland under human impact, archaeoanthracological synthesis for lowlands in Czech Republic

The vegetation history of lowland woodlands in Central Europe is closely related with human activities. Our study is focused on the evaluation of a large archaeo–anthralogical dataset from a large–scale territory in Central Europe. Our dataset contains about 240 891 charcoal records from 474 localities. Our research focuses on the reconstruction of the woodland history in the surroundings of archaeological sites from the Neolithic (7600 BP) to the Migration Period (1450 BP) and reveals differences in the anthracological records among regions of the Czech Republic. A comparison of long–term charcoal records from regions with a different presence of human activities has allowed for a special evaluation of vegetation trends. Environmental conditions in the regions are not uniform and our study detects the variability of charcoal assemblages and different vegetation histories among the localities. The smallest differences of species composition among regions were recorded in the Neolithic. Land–use changes during the Bronze Age accelerated the compositional change of the woodland vegetation. We distinguish 3 different types of woodland history, which are based on trends in the charcoal taxa composition: a) slight vegetation changes and predominance of Quercus; b) important changes of woodland composition during the Bronze Age; c) slight vegetation changes and high abundance of Pinus. Vegetation trends, which began in the Bronze Age, continued into the Iron Age.The Late Holocene woodland transformation was related to the migration trends of Carpinus, Fagus and Abies. Overall, it is clear that the transformation of woodland vegetation had an east–west direction and our study area shows a significant difference among regions. The results of our study show that abundant archaeo–anthracological records from many sites and periods can also rectify the gaps sometimes observed in charcoal sequences of individual sites.